Experience and opinions of healthcare professionals on COVID-19 and inactive COVID-19 Vaccine (Coronavac, developed by sinovac of china)

Abstract

It is aimed to determine the opinions and experiences of healthcare professionals about COVID-19, inactive COVID-19 vaccine and the frequency of hesitation, vaccine rejection, and vaccination status, and to analyze the reasons for vaccine rejection and the contributing factors. The research is a cross-sectional study, and the universe of the study consists of all healthcare personnel (7200 people) working in hospitals. The independent variables of the questionnaire included socio-demographic characteristics, descriptive questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, and the COVID-19 Fear Scale. A value of p <0.05 was considered statistically significant. We found that 26.2% (184) of the healthcare workers participating in the study were diagnosed with COVID-19. 53.7% of the participants reported that they provided health care for COVID-19 patients. When the vaccine preferences of the participants were questioned, 42.2% stated that they would prefer the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine, 30.1% Turkish vaccine, 22.4% German BioNTechPfizer vaccine, 1.7% American Moderna vaccine, 3.1% English Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, and 0.6% the Russian Gamaleya vaccine. When the reasons for anti-vaccine attitude were questioned, 44.2% of the participants stated that they did not think the vaccine was safe. When we compared the COVID-19 Fear Scale scores according to the characteristics of the participants, we found that individuals in the 35-44 age group got higher COVID-19 Fear Scale scores than the other groups (p<0.05). When the median scores of the profession groups were compared, the median scores of nurses/midwives/paramedics were found to be higher than the other groups (p<0.05). Awareness in the population can be raised and confusion can be eliminated by healthcare professionals by speaking clearly and decisively, based on experience in previous epidemics.