About half of Americans are interested in receiving an updated COVID-19 vaccine more than three years later that the virus has infected millions of people and disrupted daily life in the United States and around the world, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The results suggest that There are more people willing to receive a booster dose than a year ago, when only about one in six Americans opted for the updated vaccine, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The national online survey, which concluded Thursday, showed that Almost 30% of respondents were very interested in getting vaccinated and another 24% were somewhat interested. Almost 17% were not very interested and 30% were not interested at all.
American health authorities They recommended the updated COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna earlier this week, directed against the omicron variant of the coronavirus that has recently circulated.
US authorities advise much broader use of the vaccine —for everyone 6 months of age and older—compared to recommendations from many European countries, which prioritize the elderly and other vulnerable groups.
The latest advice from the World Health Organization says that additional doses beyond the first two and a booster are not routinely recommended, except in older adults and certain risk groups such as those with other diseases.
About 14% of those not interested in receiving the booster dose said it was because they already had C0vid, while another 14% said they believed their previous vaccines provided enough protection. About 3% said their age group does not need the vaccine.
The number of Americans hospitalized for C0vid-19 has increased in recent weeks, but it is still well below the levels observed between 2020 and early 2022.
Reduces general worry
About 54% of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they were “personally” concerned about the spread of the virus, down from 77% in a survey conducted three years ago. At the height of the pandemic, in early 2020, around 90% of respondents were worried.
Almost 42% stated that they were mainly interested in getting vaccinated to reduce the risk of serious illness.
Demand for the vaccine had fallen sharply after 2021, when it was first available to more than 240 million people in the United States, or 73% of the population, received at least one injection.
During the last vaccination campaign, when the majority of the United States had already had the C0vid virus or had been previously vaccinated, only about 56.5 million people have received updated booster shots, CDC data shows. This figure is well below the annual U.S. flu vaccine market, which is around 160 million shots.
The C0vid-19 vaccines have also roiled American politics, with many Republicans seeing the push for vaccination as government overreach. Only 34% of Republicans said they would be interested in receiving the updated vaccine, compared to 77% of Democrats.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential race, On Wednesday, he urged residents of his state under 65 not to get vaccinated.
About 36% of people not interested in the vaccine They said their main reason was because they think the vaccine is dangerous, and another 5% said they did not believe C0vid makes people sick.
“It really worries me that more than 30% think it is dangerous when there is really no credible evidence of this, but there is a lot of misinformation and, honestly, alarmism”said Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in Washington and former chief scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“This illustrates the power of misinformation combined with anxiety,” he added.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online and nationwide between September 8 and 14, collecting responses from 4,413 American adults. It had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 2 percentage points.
2023-09-15 16:12:16
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