COVID-19 Vaccine Administration and Hesitation Among Psychiatric Emergency Services Patients

Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) at Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs (VACT) began offering the COVID-19 vaccine to eligible veterans in February 2021. From February 10 to March 17, 2021 there were 110 encounters where a veteran was offered the vaccine (96 unique veterans). Of those 96...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mitchell, Lorena, Wilkosz, Meghan, Fuehrlein, Brian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Brief Report
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8853048/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35150353
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10597-022-00949-3
Descripción
Sumario:Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) at Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs (VACT) began offering the COVID-19 vaccine to eligible veterans in February 2021. From February 10 to March 17, 2021 there were 110 encounters where a veteran was offered the vaccine (96 unique veterans). Of those 96 veterans, 39 (40.6%) were interested in receiving the vaccine. Of those, 23 (60.0%) veterans received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and among those, 21 (91.3%) eventually received the second dose. Sixteen veterans were interested but unable to receive the vaccine due to PES-related obstacles. Common themes regarding vaccine hesitancy among this population include vaccine mistrust and concerns about side effects. Offering the vaccine to PES patients allowed VACT to reach a vulnerable subset of veterans who may be at higher risk of contracting the virus and experience worse disease outcomes.

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