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Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries

The success of mass vaccination programs against SARS-CoV-2 hinges on the public’s acceptance of the vaccines. During a vaccine roll-out, individuals have limited information about the potential side-effects and benefits. Given the public health concern of the COVID pandemic, providing appropriate i...

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Autores principales: Agosti, Francesca, Toffolutti, Veronica, Cavalli, Nicolò, Nivakoski, Sanna, Mascherini, Massimiliano, Aassve, Arnstein
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9491558/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36129897
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273555
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author Agosti, Francesca
Toffolutti, Veronica
Cavalli, Nicolò
Nivakoski, Sanna
Mascherini, Massimiliano
Aassve, Arnstein
author_facet Agosti, Francesca
Toffolutti, Veronica
Cavalli, Nicolò
Nivakoski, Sanna
Mascherini, Massimiliano
Aassve, Arnstein
author_sort Agosti, Francesca
collection PubMed
description The success of mass vaccination programs against SARS-CoV-2 hinges on the public’s acceptance of the vaccines. During a vaccine roll-out, individuals have limited information about the potential side-effects and benefits. Given the public health concern of the COVID pandemic, providing appropriate information fast matters for the success of the campaign. In this paper, time-trends in vaccine hesitancy were examined using a sample of 35,390 respondents from the Eurofound’s Living, Working and COVID-19 (LWC) data collected between 12 February and 28 March 2021 across 28 European countries. The data cover the initial stage of the vaccine roll-out. We exploit the fact that during this period, news about rare cases of blood clots with low blood platelets were potentially linked to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (or Vaxzeveria). Multivariate regression models were used to analyze i) vaccine hesitancy trends, and whether any trend-change was associated with the link between the AstraZeneca vaccine ii) and blood clots (AstraZeneca controversy), and iii) the suspension among several European countries. Our estimates show that vaccine hesitancy increased over the early stage of the vaccine roll-out (0·002, 95% CI: [0·002 to 0·003]), a positive shift took place in the likelihood of hesitancy following the controversy (0·230, 95% CI: [0·157 to 0·302]), with the trend subsequently turning negative (-0·007, 95% CI: [-0·010 to -0·005]). Countries deciding to suspend the AstraZeneca vaccine experienced an increase in vaccine hesitancy after the suspensions (0·068, 95% CI: [0·04 to 0·095]). Trust in institutions is negatively associated with vaccine hesitancy. The results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 vaccine hesitancy increased steadily since the beginning of the vaccine roll-out and the AstraZeneca controversy and its suspension, made modest (though significant) contributions to increased hesitancy.
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spelling pubmed-94915582022-09-22 Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries Agosti, Francesca Toffolutti, Veronica Cavalli, Nicolò Nivakoski, Sanna Mascherini, Massimiliano Aassve, Arnstein PLoS One Research Article The success of mass vaccination programs against SARS-CoV-2 hinges on the public’s acceptance of the vaccines. During a vaccine roll-out, individuals have limited information about the potential side-effects and benefits. Given the public health concern of the COVID pandemic, providing appropriate information fast matters for the success of the campaign. In this paper, time-trends in vaccine hesitancy were examined using a sample of 35,390 respondents from the Eurofound’s Living, Working and COVID-19 (LWC) data collected between 12 February and 28 March 2021 across 28 European countries. The data cover the initial stage of the vaccine roll-out. We exploit the fact that during this period, news about rare cases of blood clots with low blood platelets were potentially linked to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (or Vaxzeveria). Multivariate regression models were used to analyze i) vaccine hesitancy trends, and whether any trend-change was associated with the link between the AstraZeneca vaccine ii) and blood clots (AstraZeneca controversy), and iii) the suspension among several European countries. Our estimates show that vaccine hesitancy increased over the early stage of the vaccine roll-out (0·002, 95% CI: [0·002 to 0·003]), a positive shift took place in the likelihood of hesitancy following the controversy (0·230, 95% CI: [0·157 to 0·302]), with the trend subsequently turning negative (-0·007, 95% CI: [-0·010 to -0·005]). Countries deciding to suspend the AstraZeneca vaccine experienced an increase in vaccine hesitancy after the suspensions (0·068, 95% CI: [0·04 to 0·095]). Trust in institutions is negatively associated with vaccine hesitancy. The results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 vaccine hesitancy increased steadily since the beginning of the vaccine roll-out and the AstraZeneca controversy and its suspension, made modest (though significant) contributions to increased hesitancy. Public Library of Science 2022-09-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9491558/ /pubmed/36129897 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273555 Text en © 2022 Agosti et al 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 author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Agosti, Francesca
Toffolutti, Veronica
Cavalli, Nicolò
Nivakoski, Sanna
Mascherini, Massimiliano
Aassve, Arnstein
Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries
title Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries
title_full Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries
title_fullStr Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries
title_full_unstemmed Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries
title_short Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries
title_sort information and vaccine hesitancy: evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 european countries
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9491558/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36129897
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273555
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