Factors associated with the decision to receive bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccination among health care personnel

Abstract

COVID-19 vaccination is effective at reducing SARS-CoV-2 complications, but uptake has been low. Our objective in this study was to compare the importance of factors reported to influence the decision to receive a bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine among health care personnel (HCP) tested for SARS-CoV-2 between October 2022 and April 2023 in a 20-hospital vaccine effectiveness study in the United States (n = 1656). Compared with those who had not received the booster, the factors most likely to be reported to be important were concerns about contracting COVID-19 (84.0% of those who had received the bivalent booster vs. 47.5% of those who had not, difference 36.6% points (PP), 95% confidence interval [CI] 32.1 to 41.1%), spreading infection to family members (89.2% vs. 62.8%, difference 26.3 PP, 95% CI 22.3 to 30.4%), and spreading infection to colleagues at work (85.5% vs. 59.4%, difference 26.1 PP, 95% CI 21.7 to 30.5%). HCP who had received the booster more frequently cited the primary literature (61.7% vs. 31.8%, difference 29.9 PP, 95% CI 24.6 to 35.2%) and employer recommendations (48.3% vs. 29.8%, difference 18.5 PP, 95% CI 13.2 to 23.9%) as influencing their decision. This analysis provides insight into factors for targeting future vaccine messaging.

Keywords: COVID-19 vaccines; health personnel; occupational health; public health; vaccination hesitancy.

Figure 1.

Responses to questions about how factors influenced vaccination decisions, stratified by whether participants had received the COVID-19 bivalent booster, project PREVENT, October 2022–April 2023. Each bar displays the proportion of responses in each likert category. All bars are indexed to “moderately agree” (e.g., that is where the vertical line is on the graph), so the total length of the bar denotes 100% of responses. The panel on the left shows responses from those who had not received the bivalent booster, while the panel on the right shows responses from those who had received the bivalent booster.