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COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa

Across the globe, comprehensive COVID-19 vaccination programs have been rolled out. Naturally, it remains paramount for efficiency to ensure uptake. Hypothetical vaccine acceptability in South Africa was high prior to the availability of inoculation in August 2020—three-quarters stated intent to imm...

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Autores principales: Steenberg, Bent, Sokani, Andile, Myburgh, Nellie, Mutevedzi, Portia, Madhi, Shabir A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9966603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36851284
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11020407
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author Steenberg, Bent
Sokani, Andile
Myburgh, Nellie
Mutevedzi, Portia
Madhi, Shabir A.
author_facet Steenberg, Bent
Sokani, Andile
Myburgh, Nellie
Mutevedzi, Portia
Madhi, Shabir A.
author_sort Steenberg, Bent
collection PubMed
description Across the globe, comprehensive COVID-19 vaccination programs have been rolled out. Naturally, it remains paramount for efficiency to ensure uptake. Hypothetical vaccine acceptability in South Africa was high prior to the availability of inoculation in August 2020—three-quarters stated intent to immunize nationally. However, 24 months on, less than one-third have finished their vaccination on a national average, and in the sprawling South Western Townships (Soweto), this figure remains troublingly low with as many as four in every five still hesitant. Medical anthropologists have recently portrayed how COVID-19’s jumbled mediatization produces a ‘field of suspicion’ casting serious doubt on authorities and vaccines through misinformation and counterfactual claims, which fuels ‘othering’ and fosters hesitancy. It follows that intent to immunize cannot be used to predict uptake. Here, we take this conceptual framework one step further and illustrate how South African context-specific factors imbricate to amplify uncertainty and fear due the productive nature of communicability, which transforms othering into racialization and exacerbates existing societal polarizations. We also encounter Africanized forms of conspiracy theories and find their narrational roots in colonization and racism. Finally, we discuss semblances with HIV and how the COVID-19 pandemic’s biomedicalization may inadvertently have led to vaccine resistance due to medical pluralism and cultural/spiritual practices endemic to the townships.
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spelling pubmed-99666032023-02-26 COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa Steenberg, Bent Sokani, Andile Myburgh, Nellie Mutevedzi, Portia Madhi, Shabir A. Vaccines (Basel) Article Across the globe, comprehensive COVID-19 vaccination programs have been rolled out. Naturally, it remains paramount for efficiency to ensure uptake. Hypothetical vaccine acceptability in South Africa was high prior to the availability of inoculation in August 2020—three-quarters stated intent to immunize nationally. However, 24 months on, less than one-third have finished their vaccination on a national average, and in the sprawling South Western Townships (Soweto), this figure remains troublingly low with as many as four in every five still hesitant. Medical anthropologists have recently portrayed how COVID-19’s jumbled mediatization produces a ‘field of suspicion’ casting serious doubt on authorities and vaccines through misinformation and counterfactual claims, which fuels ‘othering’ and fosters hesitancy. It follows that intent to immunize cannot be used to predict uptake. Here, we take this conceptual framework one step further and illustrate how South African context-specific factors imbricate to amplify uncertainty and fear due the productive nature of communicability, which transforms othering into racialization and exacerbates existing societal polarizations. We also encounter Africanized forms of conspiracy theories and find their narrational roots in colonization and racism. Finally, we discuss semblances with HIV and how the COVID-19 pandemic’s biomedicalization may inadvertently have led to vaccine resistance due to medical pluralism and cultural/spiritual practices endemic to the townships. MDPI 2023-02-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9966603/ /pubmed/36851284 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11020407 Text en © 2023 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
Steenberg, Bent
Sokani, Andile
Myburgh, Nellie
Mutevedzi, Portia
Madhi, Shabir A.
COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa
title COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa
title_full COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa
title_fullStr COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa
title_short COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout: Aspects of Hesitancy in South Africa
title_sort covid-19 vaccination rollout: aspects of hesitancy in south africa
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9966603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36851284
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11020407
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