Self-Assessment of Health Status and Willingness to Be Vaccinated in Adolescents from the Niigata Prefecture and the Khabarovsk Region during COVID-19.

Hiromi Inaba,Konstantin V Zhmerenetsky,Fumi Hoshino,Kazuo Ishigami,Kseniia E Potapova,Marina F Rziankina,Kousuke Takano

doi:10.3390/healthcare10020184

Abstract

This study examined the self-assessment of Niigata’s and Khabarovsk’s adolescents’ health status and their willingness to be vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic. A self-reported questionnaire was administered to 735 boys and girls (aged 15 years) from Niigata, Japan (n = 387), and Khabarovsk, Russia (n = 394), between May and July 2021. Specifically, this questionnaire focused on COVID-19, including a self-assessment of health status, adaptation to a new lifestyle, and impressions about the COVID-19 vaccination. The self-assessment was based on a 4-point scale: “Got very bad”; “Got a little bit bad”; “Did not change”; “Got better/I don’t know”. Additionally, binomial logistic regression was conducted to determine the association between the self-assessment of health status and the factors exacerbating their responses. Based on the findings, 25.7 and 29.9% of Niigata and Khabarovsk’s adolescents, respectively, selected “Got very bad” and “Got a little bit bad” for their self-assessments, while the binomial logistic regression showed that the difficulty of adapting to a new lifestyle was a factor worsening the boys’ subjective health. However, the items could not explain the deterioration of their subjective health in girls. Moreover, 76.9% of Niigata’s adolescents were positive about the COVID-19 vaccination, compared to 35.5% of the adolescents in Khabarovsk.

Highlights

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic [1]
Niigata’s adolescents were more likely to be afraid of infection, but the boys and girls who rated their self-assessment of health status as “Got very bad” and “Got a little bit bad” were less likely than those in Russia
This study examined the self-assessment of Niigata and Khabarovsk adolescents’

Summary

Introduction

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic [1]. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly changed people’s daily lives, forcing countries to take actions such as lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing measures [3]. The total number of patients with COVID-19 is reported daily by each institution [2,4,5]. Infection among children and adolescents is generally less severe and causes fewer deaths than in adults [6,7]. Previous research has confirmed that the risk of developing severe and critical conditions in children is much lower than that in adults [8]. There is a concern that the number of tests will be reduced; the number of infected children and adolescents will be lower than the actual number. According to publicly available data from Khabarovsk and other countries’ sources, the clinical picture of COVID-19 infection in children is mostly characterized by lack of pathology, lack of specificity, instability, and lack of manifestations

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion