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 The Dec. 2-8 national opinion survey showed that 35% of women said
they were “not very” or “not at all” interested in getting a
vaccine, an increase of 9 points from a similar poll conducted in
May when vaccines were still being developed.
Some 55% of women said they were “very” or “somewhat” interested in
getting vaccinated, a drop of about 6 percentage points in the same
time span. Meanwhile, 68% of men said they would get vaccinated,
which is unchanged from May.
Overall, 61% of Americans said in December that they are open to
getting vaccinated - a 4 point decline since the May poll. The
latest survey also recorded a sharp drop in the number of parents
willing to give their children the vaccine - 53% versus 62% in May.
Convincing women to accept the vaccine will be critical for slowing
the spread of the novel coronavirus because mothers tend to be the
ones who make doctor's appointments and keep up with immunizations,
said Rupali Limaye, director of behavioral and implementation
science at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"Women just tend to be more careful. They tend to do a lot more
reading," Limaye said, so assuring them that no shortcuts were taken
in the vaccine approval process will be crucial.
Mothers make about 80 percent of health care decisions for their
children and are more likely to be the caregivers when a child falls
ill, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
And a 2018 World Health Organization study found that by empowering
Southeast Asian women and improving their access to medical
information, child vaccine coverage and health outcomes improved.
Among women who said in the Reuters/Ipsos survey they were not
interested in the vaccine, 60% said they were “nervous about getting
vaccinated right away with a new vaccine that has been approved so
quickly.” And 48% of those disinterested women said “the risks of
taking a new vaccine outweigh any benefits.”
Another 38% said they were not interested in the vaccine because
they do not trust the companies making them and 27% said they do not
think a vaccine will adequately protect them.
Britain this week began inoculations with a vaccine developed by
Germany’s BioNTech and Pfizer - less than a year after the genetic
code of the new coronavirus was first published. A panel of outside
advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday gave a
green light to emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine and FDA
authorization was expected within days.
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Scientists believe that "herd immunity" against the virus could be achieved once
about 70% of the population has been exposed to it, either through natural
infection or a vaccine.
POLITICAL SPLIT
One of the respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, was Alice Bayless, a
56-year-old nurse in Merritt Island, Florida, who said she does not plan to get
the COVID-19 vaccine even if the hospital where she works makes it available.
"They rushed it through so quickly they are barely getting FDA approval on it,"
she said. "I just want to wait and see what happens."
Bayless said older people and those with underlying health conditions should be
vaccinated, but there is no rush for people not at high risk of severe COVID-19,
the disease caused by the virus that has killed 290,000 people in the United
States, the most in the world.
Tameka Dumas, 47, of Grenada, Mississippi, said she, as did many poll
respondents, would like to first see how someone fares in the year following the
vaccination.
"I think it has been rushed to get on the market too fast," she said.
Politics also comes into play. According to the poll, Republicans, who have been
generally less likely than others to wear protective face masks or express
concerns about the virus, also appeared to be less likely to get vaccinated: 53%
said they were interested in a vaccine, compared with 75% of Democrats.
African Americans were less likely to get the vaccine: 49% said they were
interested in the vaccine, compared with 63% of whites and 61% of Hispanics. And
56% of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 were interested in a vaccine,
compared with 69% of those who are 55 or older.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United
States. It gathered responses from 4,419 U.S. adults, including 1,216 who said
they were not interested in getting a coronavirus vaccine. The poll has as
credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 2 percentage points for
the entire sample and 5 points for smaller groups like African Americans.
(Reporting by Chris Kahn and Deena Beasley, editing by Ross Colvin and Grant
McCool)
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