Americans Reject Covid19 Vaccines
“Vaccines Could be Deadlier than the Virus”
A survey carried out recently indicate that mericans have little or no interest in taking a coronavirus vaccine with some voicing concerns that the record pace at which vaccines are being developed could compromise safety.
While health experts say a vaccine to prevent infection is needed to return life to normal, the survey points to a potential trust issue for the Trump administration already under fire for its often contradictory safety guidance during the pandemic.
Some 36% of respondents said they would be less willing to take a vaccine if U.S. President Donald Trump said it was safe, compared with only 14% who would be more interested.
Most respondents in the survey of 4,428 U.S. adults taken between May 13 and May 19 said they would be heavily influenced by guidance from the Food and Drug Administration or results of large-scale scientific studies showing that the vaccine was safe.
Less than two-thirds of respondents said they were “very” or “somewhat” interested in a vaccine, a figure some health experts expected would be higher given the heightened awareness of COVID-19 and the more than 92,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the United States alone.
“It’s a little lower than I thought it would be with all the attention to COVID-19,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease and vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “I would have expected somewhere around 75 percent.”
Fourteen percent of respondents said they were not at all interested in taking a vaccine, and 10% said they were not very interested. Another 11% were unsure.
There are more than 100 COVID-19 vaccine candidates in development globally, including some already in human clinical trials. Earlier this week, U.S. biotech Moderna Inc announced potentially promising preliminary results from just eight individuals who took part in a safety study.
Among those respondents who expressed little or no interest in a coronavirus vaccine, nearly half said they were worried about the speed with which they are being developed. More than 40% said they believe the vaccine is riskier than the disease itself.