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Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study
BACKGROUND: Massive community-wide testing has become the cornerstone of management strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: This study was a comparative analysis between the United Kingdom and China, which aimed to assess public attitudes and uptake regarding COVID-19 testing, with a focus...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
JMIR Publications
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8404307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34541460 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26895 |
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author | Lin, Leesa Song, Yi Wang, Qian Pu, Jialu Sun, Fiona Yueqian Zhang, Yixuan Zhou, Xinyu Larson, Heidi J Hou, Zhiyuan |
author_facet | Lin, Leesa Song, Yi Wang, Qian Pu, Jialu Sun, Fiona Yueqian Zhang, Yixuan Zhou, Xinyu Larson, Heidi J Hou, Zhiyuan |
author_sort | Lin, Leesa |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Massive community-wide testing has become the cornerstone of management strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: This study was a comparative analysis between the United Kingdom and China, which aimed to assess public attitudes and uptake regarding COVID-19 testing, with a focus on factors of COVID-19 testing hesitancy, including effectiveness, access, risk perception, and communication. METHODS: We collected and manually coded 3856 UK tweets and 9299 Chinese Sina Weibo posts mentioning COVID-19 testing from June 1 to July 15, 2020. Adapted from the World Health Organization’s 3C Model of Vaccine Hesitancy, we employed social listening analysis examining key factors of COVID-19 testing hesitancy (confidence, complacency, convenience, and communication). Descriptive analysis, time trends, geographical mapping, and chi-squared tests were performed to assess the temporal, spatial, and sociodemographic characteristics that determine the difference in attitudes or uptake of COVID-19 tests. RESULTS: The UK tweets demonstrated a higher percentage of support toward COVID-19 testing than the posts from China. There were much wider reports of public uptake of COVID-19 tests in mainland China than in the United Kingdom; however, uncomfortable experiences and logistical barriers to testing were more expressed in China. The driving forces for undergoing COVID-19 testing were personal health needs, community-wide testing, and mandatory testing policies for travel, with major differences in the ranking order between the two countries. Rumors and information inquiries about COVID-19 testing were also identified. CONCLUSIONS: Public attitudes and acceptance toward COVID-19 testing constantly evolve with local epidemic situations. Policies and information campaigns that emphasize the importance of timely testing and rapid communication responses to inquiries and rumors, and provide a supportive environment for accessing tests are key to tackling COVID-19 testing hesitancy and increasing uptake. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8404307 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | JMIR Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84043072021-09-14 Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study Lin, Leesa Song, Yi Wang, Qian Pu, Jialu Sun, Fiona Yueqian Zhang, Yixuan Zhou, Xinyu Larson, Heidi J Hou, Zhiyuan JMIR Infodemiology Original Paper BACKGROUND: Massive community-wide testing has become the cornerstone of management strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: This study was a comparative analysis between the United Kingdom and China, which aimed to assess public attitudes and uptake regarding COVID-19 testing, with a focus on factors of COVID-19 testing hesitancy, including effectiveness, access, risk perception, and communication. METHODS: We collected and manually coded 3856 UK tweets and 9299 Chinese Sina Weibo posts mentioning COVID-19 testing from June 1 to July 15, 2020. Adapted from the World Health Organization’s 3C Model of Vaccine Hesitancy, we employed social listening analysis examining key factors of COVID-19 testing hesitancy (confidence, complacency, convenience, and communication). Descriptive analysis, time trends, geographical mapping, and chi-squared tests were performed to assess the temporal, spatial, and sociodemographic characteristics that determine the difference in attitudes or uptake of COVID-19 tests. RESULTS: The UK tweets demonstrated a higher percentage of support toward COVID-19 testing than the posts from China. There were much wider reports of public uptake of COVID-19 tests in mainland China than in the United Kingdom; however, uncomfortable experiences and logistical barriers to testing were more expressed in China. The driving forces for undergoing COVID-19 testing were personal health needs, community-wide testing, and mandatory testing policies for travel, with major differences in the ranking order between the two countries. Rumors and information inquiries about COVID-19 testing were also identified. CONCLUSIONS: Public attitudes and acceptance toward COVID-19 testing constantly evolve with local epidemic situations. Policies and information campaigns that emphasize the importance of timely testing and rapid communication responses to inquiries and rumors, and provide a supportive environment for accessing tests are key to tackling COVID-19 testing hesitancy and increasing uptake. JMIR Publications 2021-08-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8404307/ /pubmed/34541460 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26895 Text en ©Leesa Lin, Yi Song, Qian Wang, Jialu Pu, Fiona Yueqian Sun, Yixuan Zhang, Xinyu Zhou, Heidi J Larson, Zhiyuan Hou. Originally published in JMIR Infodemiology (https://infodemiology.jmir.org), 27.08.2021. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Infodemiology, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://infodemiology.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Lin, Leesa Song, Yi Wang, Qian Pu, Jialu Sun, Fiona Yueqian Zhang, Yixuan Zhou, Xinyu Larson, Heidi J Hou, Zhiyuan Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study |
title | Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study |
title_full | Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study |
title_fullStr | Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study |
title_short | Public Attitudes and Factors of COVID-19 Testing Hesitancy in the United Kingdom and China: Comparative Infodemiology Study |
title_sort | public attitudes and factors of covid-19 testing hesitancy in the united kingdom and china: comparative infodemiology study |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8404307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34541460 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26895 |
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