Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Feb 23;40(9):1191-1197.
doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.01.054. Epub 2022 Feb 1.

Conditionality of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in European countries

Leonardo W Heyerdahl  1 , Muriel Vray  2 , Benedetta Lana  1 , Nastassia Tvardik  1 , Nina Gobat  3 , Marta Wanat  3 , Sarah Tonkin-Crine  3 , Sibyl Anthierens  4 , Herman Goossens  5 , Tamara Giles-Vernick  6
Affiliations

Conditionality of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in European countries

Leonardo W Heyerdahl et al. Vaccine. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has offered a powerful preventive measure to help control SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Nevertheless, long-standing public hesitation around vaccines heightened concerns that vaccine coverage would not achieve desired public health impacts, particularly in light of more contagious variants. This cross-sectional survey was conducted online just before the European vaccine rollout in December 2020 among 7000 respondents (aged 18-65) in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine. The survey included open text boxes for fuller explanation of responses. Overall, 56.9% of respondents would accept a COVID-19 vaccine, 19.0% would not, and 24.1% did not know or preferred not to say. By country, between 44% (France) and 66% (Italy) of respondents would accept a COVID-19 vaccine. Respondents expressed conditionality in open responses, voicing concerns about vaccine safety and mistrust of authorities. We highlight lessons learned about the dynamism of vaccine conditionality and persistence of safety concerns.

Keywords: COVID-19; Europe; Mixed methods; Vaccine hesitancy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Vaccine acceptance by socio-demographic characteristics.
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Vaccine acceptance by socio-demographic characteristics.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Wouters O.J., Shadlen K.C., Salcher-Konrad M., Pollard A.J., Larson H.J., Teerawattananon Y., et al. Challenges in ensuring global access to COVID-19 vaccines: production, affordability, allocation, and deployment. Lancet. 2021;397(10278):1023–1034. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lazarus J.V., Ratzan S.C., Palayew A., Gostin L.O., Larson H.J., Rabin K., et al. A global survey of potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine. Nat Med. 2021;27(2):225–228. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Murphy J., Vallières F., Bentall R.P., Shevlin M., McBride O., Hartman T.K., et al. Psychological characteristics associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Nat Commun. 2021;12(1) doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-20226-9. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ward J.K., Alleaume C., Peretti-Watel P. The French public's attitudes to a future COVID-19 vaccine: The politicization of a public health issue. Soc Sci Med. 2020;265 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Palamenghi L., Barello S., Boccia S., Graffigna G. Mistrust in biomedical research and vaccine hesitancy: the forefront challenge in the battle against COVID-19 in Italy. Eur J Epidemiol. 2020;35(8):785–788. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types