Purpose: The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses a serious threat to countless lives. Development of an efficient vaccination can help end the pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy/refusal is a huge issue that could stymie attempts to combat the disease. The goal of this study is to examine COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Iraq where at the end of July 2021, only 7.4% of the population was vaccinated.
Participants and Methods: This is a cross-sectional web-based study. A survey was used to assess knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) toward COVID-19. Willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 was assessed, with a logistic regression used to identify variables associated with vaccine acceptance. Motives for vaccination refusal/hesitation were reported.
Results: A total of 1542 participants (females = 56.7%) completed the questionnaire. Participants displayed high knowledge and good protective practices toward COVID-19 (median score = 15 out of 19 and 20 out of 25 respectively). 88.6% were willing to be vaccinated. Variables associated with vaccine acceptance included have not been infected with COVID-19 (OR=0.53, p=0.01), low- and moderate-income (ORs=0.42 and 0.63, p< 0.01 respectively), low education level (OR=0.33, p-value< 0.01) and perceived degree of vaccination importance (OR=1.30, P-value< 0.01). The most mentioned reasons for vaccine refusal were concerns about vaccine safety and side effects (90.35%) and the need for more information about the vaccine (81.2%).
Conclusion: Participants showed high acceptance toward COVID-19 vaccination, nevertheless more efforts should be applied to overcome barriers mentioned by the participants.

Title

Patient Preference and Adherence

Publisher

Dovepress

Publisher Country

New Zealand

Indexing

Thomson Reuters

Impact Factor

2.711

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

16

Year

2022

Pages

307-319