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Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal

Considering the early inequity in global COVID-19 vaccine distribution, we compared the level of population immunity to SARS-CoV-2 with vaccine uptake and refusal between rural and urban Kenya two years after the pandemic onset. A population-based seroprevalence study was conducted in the city of Na...

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Autores principales: Nasimiyu, Carolyne, Ngere, Isaac, Dawa, Jeanette, Amoth, Patrick, Oluga, Ouma, Ngunu, Carol, Mirieri, Harriet, Gachohi, John, Dayan, Moshe, Liku, Nzisa, Njoroge, Ruth, Odinoh, Raymond, Owaka, Samuel, Khamadi, Samoel A., Konongoi, Samson L., Galo, Sudi, Elamenya, Linet, Mureithi, Marianne, Anzala, Omu, Breiman, Robert, Osoro, Eric, Njenga, M. Kariuki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9862465/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36679913
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11010068
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author Nasimiyu, Carolyne
Ngere, Isaac
Dawa, Jeanette
Amoth, Patrick
Oluga, Ouma
Ngunu, Carol
Mirieri, Harriet
Gachohi, John
Dayan, Moshe
Liku, Nzisa
Njoroge, Ruth
Odinoh, Raymond
Owaka, Samuel
Khamadi, Samoel A.
Konongoi, Samson L.
Galo, Sudi
Elamenya, Linet
Mureithi, Marianne
Anzala, Omu
Breiman, Robert
Osoro, Eric
Njenga, M. Kariuki
author_facet Nasimiyu, Carolyne
Ngere, Isaac
Dawa, Jeanette
Amoth, Patrick
Oluga, Ouma
Ngunu, Carol
Mirieri, Harriet
Gachohi, John
Dayan, Moshe
Liku, Nzisa
Njoroge, Ruth
Odinoh, Raymond
Owaka, Samuel
Khamadi, Samoel A.
Konongoi, Samson L.
Galo, Sudi
Elamenya, Linet
Mureithi, Marianne
Anzala, Omu
Breiman, Robert
Osoro, Eric
Njenga, M. Kariuki
author_sort Nasimiyu, Carolyne
collection PubMed
description Considering the early inequity in global COVID-19 vaccine distribution, we compared the level of population immunity to SARS-CoV-2 with vaccine uptake and refusal between rural and urban Kenya two years after the pandemic onset. A population-based seroprevalence study was conducted in the city of Nairobi (n = 781) and a rural western county (n = 810) between January and February 2022. The overall SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence was 90.2% (95% CI, 88.6–91.2%), including 96.7% (95% CI, 95.2–97.9%) among urban and 83.6% (95% CI, 80.6–86.0%) among rural populations. A comparison of immunity profiles showed that >50% of the rural population were strongly immunoreactive compared to <20% of the urban population, suggesting more recent infections or vaccinations in the rural population. More than 45% of the vaccine-eligible (≥18 years old) persons had not taken a single dose of the vaccine (hesitancy), including 47.6% and 46.9% of urban and rural participants, respectively. Vaccine refusal was reported in 19.6% of urban and 15.6% of rural participants, attributed to concern about vaccine safety (>75%), inadequate information (26%), and concern about vaccine effectiveness (9%). Less than 2% of vaccine refusers cited religious or cultural beliefs. These findings indicate that despite vaccine inequity, hesitancy, and refusal, herd immunity had been achieved in Kenya and likely other African countries by early 2022, with natural infections likely contributing to most of this immunity. However, vaccine campaigns should be sustained due to the need for repeat boosters associated with waning of SARS-CoV-2 immunity and emergence of immune-evading virus variants.
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spelling pubmed-98624652023-01-22 Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal Nasimiyu, Carolyne Ngere, Isaac Dawa, Jeanette Amoth, Patrick Oluga, Ouma Ngunu, Carol Mirieri, Harriet Gachohi, John Dayan, Moshe Liku, Nzisa Njoroge, Ruth Odinoh, Raymond Owaka, Samuel Khamadi, Samoel A. Konongoi, Samson L. Galo, Sudi Elamenya, Linet Mureithi, Marianne Anzala, Omu Breiman, Robert Osoro, Eric Njenga, M. Kariuki Vaccines (Basel) Article Considering the early inequity in global COVID-19 vaccine distribution, we compared the level of population immunity to SARS-CoV-2 with vaccine uptake and refusal between rural and urban Kenya two years after the pandemic onset. A population-based seroprevalence study was conducted in the city of Nairobi (n = 781) and a rural western county (n = 810) between January and February 2022. The overall SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence was 90.2% (95% CI, 88.6–91.2%), including 96.7% (95% CI, 95.2–97.9%) among urban and 83.6% (95% CI, 80.6–86.0%) among rural populations. A comparison of immunity profiles showed that >50% of the rural population were strongly immunoreactive compared to <20% of the urban population, suggesting more recent infections or vaccinations in the rural population. More than 45% of the vaccine-eligible (≥18 years old) persons had not taken a single dose of the vaccine (hesitancy), including 47.6% and 46.9% of urban and rural participants, respectively. Vaccine refusal was reported in 19.6% of urban and 15.6% of rural participants, attributed to concern about vaccine safety (>75%), inadequate information (26%), and concern about vaccine effectiveness (9%). Less than 2% of vaccine refusers cited religious or cultural beliefs. These findings indicate that despite vaccine inequity, hesitancy, and refusal, herd immunity had been achieved in Kenya and likely other African countries by early 2022, with natural infections likely contributing to most of this immunity. However, vaccine campaigns should be sustained due to the need for repeat boosters associated with waning of SARS-CoV-2 immunity and emergence of immune-evading virus variants. MDPI 2022-12-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9862465/ /pubmed/36679913 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11010068 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Nasimiyu, Carolyne
Ngere, Isaac
Dawa, Jeanette
Amoth, Patrick
Oluga, Ouma
Ngunu, Carol
Mirieri, Harriet
Gachohi, John
Dayan, Moshe
Liku, Nzisa
Njoroge, Ruth
Odinoh, Raymond
Owaka, Samuel
Khamadi, Samoel A.
Konongoi, Samson L.
Galo, Sudi
Elamenya, Linet
Mureithi, Marianne
Anzala, Omu
Breiman, Robert
Osoro, Eric
Njenga, M. Kariuki
Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal
title Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal
title_full Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal
title_fullStr Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal
title_full_unstemmed Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal
title_short Near-Complete SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence among Rural and Urban Kenyans despite Significant Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal
title_sort near-complete sars-cov-2 seroprevalence among rural and urban kenyans despite significant vaccine hesitancy and refusal
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9862465/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36679913
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11010068
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