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. 2024 Jun 7:43:102791.
doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2024.102791. eCollection 2024 Jul.

The negative impact of misinformation and vaccine conspiracy on COVID-19 vaccine uptake and attitudes among the general public in Iraq

Malik Sallam  1   2 , Nariman Kareem  1 , Mohammed Alkurtas  3
Affiliations

The negative impact of misinformation and vaccine conspiracy on COVID-19 vaccine uptake and attitudes among the general public in Iraq

Malik Sallam et al. Prev Med Rep. .

Abstract

Background: Vaccine hesitancy is a major barrier to infectious disease control. Previous studies showed high rates of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the Middle East. The current study aimed to investigate the attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and COVID-19 vaccine uptake among adult population in Iraq.

Methods: This self-administered survey-based study was conducted in August-September 2022. The survey instrument assessed participants' demographics, attitudes to COVID-19 vaccination, beliefs in COVID-19 misinformation, vaccine conspiracy beliefs, and sources of information regarding the vaccine.

Results: The study sample comprised a total of 2544 individuals, with the majority reporting the uptake of at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccination (n = 2226, 87.5 %). Positive attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination were expressed by the majority of participants (n = 1966, 77.3 %), while neutral and negative attitudes were expressed by 345 (13.6 %) and 233 (9.2 %) participants, respectively. Factors associated with positive attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination in multivariate analysis included disbelief in COVID-19 misinformation and disagreement with vaccine conspiracies. Higher COVID-19 vaccine uptake was significantly associated with previous history of COVID-19 infection, higher income, residence outside the Capital, disbelief in COVID-19 misinformation, disagreement with vaccine conspiracies, and reliance on reputable information sources.

Conclusion: COVID-19 vaccine coverage was high among the participants, with a majority having positive attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination. Disbelief in COVID-19 misinformation and disagreement with vaccine conspiracies were correlated with positive vaccine attitudes and higher vaccine uptake. These insights can inform targeted interventions to enhance vaccination campaigns.

Keywords: Attitudes; COVID-19 vaccination; Middle East; Misinformation; Vaccine conspiracy; Vaccine hesitancy.

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Conflict of interest statement

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
The association between attitude towards COVID-19 vaccination, COVID-19 vaccine uptake and the main source of information regarding the vaccine among the study participants who were adult Iraqi citizens with data collected during August–September 2022 (N = 2544). COVID-19: Coronavirus disease 2019.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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