WEDNESDAY, March 10, 2021 (HealthDay News) — More than two-thirds of women globally say they would vaccinate their children against COVID-19, according to a study published online March 1 in the European Journal of Epidemiology.
Malia Skjefte, from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues assessed global vaccine acceptance among pregnant women and mothers of children younger than 18 years based on an online survey conducted between Oct. 28 and Nov. 18, 2020 (17,871 total survey responses from women in 16 countries).
The researchers found that for a COVID-19 vaccine with 90 percent efficacy, 52.0 percent of pregnant women and 73.4 percent of nonpregnant women indicated an intention to receive the vaccine. Just over two-thirds of all women (69.2 percent) indicated an intention to vaccinate their children. In India, the Philippines, and all sampled countries in Latin America, vaccine acceptance was highest, whereas it was lowest in Russia, the United States, and Australia. Confidence in vaccine safety or effectiveness, worrying about COVID-19, belief in the importance of vaccines to their own country, compliance to mask guidelines, trust of public health agencies/health science, as well as attitudes toward routine vaccines were the strongest predictors of vaccine acceptance.
“Vaccination campaigns for women and children should be specific for each country in order to attain the largest impact,” the authors write.
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