Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccination among Front-Line Health Care Workers: A Nationwide Survey of Emergency Medical Services Personnel from Germany

Nohl, André; Afflerbach, Christian; Lurz, Christian; Brune, Bastian; Ohmann, Tobias; Weichert, Veronika; Zeiger, Sascha; Dudda, Marcel

doi:10.3390/vaccines9050424

Cited by 54 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…No significant differences were observed in vaccine effectiveness across genders at any dose and for any outcome. This finding is in line with previous trials and real-world studies on healthcare workers [3,4,14], and may help, at least in part, to shorten the gap in vaccine hesitancy between males and females, the latter having shown higher reluctancy in several surveys [14,[26][27][28][29]. Beyond effectiveness, however, the potential reasons behind female hesitancy could be the lower COVID-19 lethality [2,16], and especially the substantially higher rates of adverse events among vaccinated women [23,30].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Interim Estimates of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness in a Mass Vaccination Setting: Data from an Italian Province

et al. 2021

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This retrospective cohort study compared the rates of virologically-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections, symptomatic or lethal COVID-19 among the residents of the Italian province of Pescara who received one or two doses of COVID-19 vaccines, versus the unvaccinated. The official data of the National Health System were used, and a total of 69,539 vaccinated adults were compared with 175,687 unvaccinated. Among the subjects who received at least one vaccine dose, 85 infections (0.12%), 18 severe and 3 lethal COVID-19 cases were recorded after an average follow-up of 38 days. Among the unvaccinated, the numbers were 6948 (4.00%), 933 (0.53%) and 241 (0.14%), respectively. The serious adverse event reports—yet unconfirmed—were 24 out of 102,394 administered doses. In a Cox model, adjusting for age, gender, and selected comorbidities, the effectiveness of either BNT162b2, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 or mRNA-1273 vaccines was higher than 95% in preventing infections (mostly due to B.1.1.7 variant), symptomatic or lethal COVID-19. No differences were observed across genders, and among the 691 subjects who received the second dose of vaccine later than the recommended date. Although preliminary, these findings support current immunization policies and may help reducing vaccine hesitancy.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Interim Estimates of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness in a Mass Vaccination Setting: Data from an Italian Province

et al. 2021

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“…After the 10 March 2021, 59% of respondents to the poll were already vaccinated against COVID-19, versus 46% in the national surveillance of French healthcare workers [ 15 ]. Since mid-2020, 15 studies investigated the willingness, and 3 reported the scaling-up of COVID-19 vaccination among healthcare professionals [ 14 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Taken together, we can estimate the overall willingness to get vaccinated at 65% (95CI 56% to 73%) among healthcare workers, with a prediction interval ranging from 18% to 94%, and varying by region of the globe ( Supplementary Figure S3 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hesitancy towards COVID-19 Vaccination among Healthcare Workers: A Multi-Centric Survey in France

et al. 2021

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Vaccination programs against COVID-19 are being scaled up. We aimed to assess the effects of vaccine characteristics on vaccine hesitancy among healthcare workers in a multi-center survey conducted within French healthcare facilities from 1 December 2020 to 26 March 2021. We invited any healthcare workers naïve of COVID-19 vaccination to complete an online self-questionnaire. They reported on their socio-demographic characteristics, as well as their perception and beliefs towards vaccination. We measured their willingness to get vaccinated in eight scenarios for candidates’ vaccines presented sequentially (1 to 4-point scale). Candidates’ vaccines varied for efficacy (25%, 50%, 100%), length of immunization (1 year or lifetime), frequency (<1/100, <1/10,000), and severity (none, moderate, severe) of adverse events. We analyzed 4349 healthcare workers’ responses with interpretable questionnaires. The crude willingness to get vaccinated was 53.2% and increased over time. We clustered the trajectories of responses using an unsupervised classification algorithm (k-means) and identified four groups of healthcare workers: those willing to get vaccinated in any scenario (18%), those not willing to get vaccinated at all (22%), and those hesitating but more likely to accept (32%) or reject (28%) the vaccination depending on the scenario. In these last two subgroups, vaccine acceptance was growing with age, educational background and was higher among men with condition. Compared to an ideal vaccine candidate, a 50% reduced efficacy resulted in an average drop in acceptance by 0.8 (SD ± 0.8, −23.5%), while it was ranging from 1.4 (SD ± 1.0, −38.4%) to 2.1 (SD ± 1.0, −58.4%) in case of severe but rare adverse event. The acceptance of a mandatory immunization program was 29.6% overall and was positively correlated to the willingness to get vaccinated, ranging from 2.4% to 60.0%. Even if healthcare workers represent a heterogeneous population, most (80%) could accept the vaccination against COVID-19. Their willingness to get the vaccine increased over time and as immunization programs became available. Among hesitant professionals, the fear of adverse events was the main concern. Targeted information campaigns reassuring about adverse events may increase vaccine coverage, in a population with a strong opinion about mandatory immunization programs.

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“…Trust in vaccines, positive emotions, and locus of control were high predictors of recommendation; some research has shown that age, as a factor capable of affecting perceived risk, inversely influences fear and hesitation in vaccines in healthcare personnel [27][28][29]; however, the results on the present sample confirmed a more positive perception and greater confidence in the vaccines of younger healthcare professionals [30]. Future research will have to clarify exactly the role of age concerning the various variable trusts, recommendations, hesitancy, and fear for vaccine.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Prompts Doctors to Recommend COVID-19 Vaccines: Is It a Question of Positive Emotion?

et al. 2021

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Vaccines are among the most successful and cost-effective public health tools and have greatly contributed to eliminating or controlling several serious vaccine-treatable diseases over the past century. To curb the spread of COVID-19, efficacious vaccination is emerging as essential in mitigating the disease and preventing deaths. Health care workers (HCW) are one of the first groups to receive vaccinations, so it is important to consider their attitudes to COVID-19 vaccination to better address barriers to widespread vaccination acceptance. This study aimed to evaluate variables that are linked with the recommendation of vaccines and intention to take-up vaccination against COVID-19 among the HCWs, in the context of the current pandemic. The study was conducted during the first week of the vaccination campaign dedicated to Italian HCWs, beginning in December 2020, and it involved all doctors in a public hospital in Sicily. The following questionnaires were administered: (1) The perceived vaccine trust questionnaire, measuring the degree of trust in vaccines by healthcare professionals both in general and for the protection of healthcare professionals themselves and patients; (2) the positive and negative affect scale-state (PANAS), for assessing positive and negative emotions in relation to their work as “frontline care providers”; (3) The locus of control of behaviour (LCB) to measure the extent to which subjects perceive responsibility for their personal behaviour (internal vs. external); (4) recommendation vaccines item, referring to the intention to recommend vaccination. The findings suggest that socio-demographic control variables (age, gender, and seniority) showed little or no predictive power in vaccine recommendation, while vaccine confidence, positive emotions, and internal locus of control were excellent predictors of vaccine recommendations by doctors. Younger doctors, both in age and experience, are more confident in vaccines and recommend them more frequently. It is essential to improve institutional communication addressed to doctors to enhance their role as vaccination facilitators.

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Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccination among Front-Line Health Care Workers: A Nationwide Survey of Emergency Medical Services Personnel from Germany

Cited by 54 publications

References 59 publications

Interim Estimates of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness in a Mass Vaccination Setting: Data from an Italian Province

Interim Estimates of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness in a Mass Vaccination Setting: Data from an Italian Province

Hesitancy towards COVID-19 Vaccination among Healthcare Workers: A Multi-Centric Survey in France

What Prompts Doctors to Recommend COVID-19 Vaccines: Is It a Question of Positive Emotion?

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