Knowledge, Attitudes and Acceptance towards COVID-19 Vaccination among Health Care Workers in Mukalla city-YEMEN: an analytical cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background COVID-19 vaccination is one of the greatest public health interventions to reduce the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yemen began on April 2021 to vaccinate healthcare workers for COVID-19 with the vaccine. However, the media's negative portrayal of vaccines safety and efficacy has led to concerns regarding the acceptance of the vaccine. Therefore, our study aimed to assess knowledge, attitudes and acceptance towards COVID-19 Vaccination among HCWs in Mukalla city-Yemen. Methods An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted using convenience sampling method in Mukalla city among healthcare workers from April 2022 to May 2022. Data were collected by a self-administered questionnaire. A Chi-square test was used to assess the association between independent variables (demographic) and dependent variables (knowledge, attitude and acceptance). Correlation between knowledge and attitude levels with rate of acceptance was assessed using Pearson correlation coefficient. Results 449 respondents were included in the final analysis, of which 237 (52.8%) were males and 212 (47.2%) were females, with a mean age ± SD of 31.0 ± 7.6 years. The overall results regarding knowledge, attitude, and acceptance rates of the COVID-19 vaccines were 65.3% 63.7% and 68.8% (with an efficacy of 90%), respectively. Acceptance was statistically associated with participants’ job, vaccination state, whether they were dealing with suspected cases of COVID-19 and their source of COVID-19 related information (p-value < 0.05). level of acceptance was moderately correlated with attitude level (r = 0.527). Conclusion Healthcare workers were found to have a moderate level of knowledge and attitude toward COVID-19 vaccination. However, acceptance rate was scaling down according to vaccine efficacy. Many demographic characteristics were significantly associated with acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination.