By Ahmed Aboulenein and Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About a portion of Americans need to get an updated COVID-19 vaccine more than three years after the virus inflamed millions and disrupted daily life in the United States and around the world, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. .
The findings suggest that more people would be willing to receive a booster shot than a year ago, when only one in six Americans had opted for an updated shot, according to data from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U. S.
The national online survey, which ended Thursday, showed that about 30% of respondents were very interested in the vaccine and 24% were interested, nearly 17% were not very interested and 30% were not at all.
U. S. public health officials The U. S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this week updated the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines that target a recently circulating Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The U. S. government recommends much wider use of the vaccine (starting at 6 months of age) compared to recommendations in many European countries, which prioritize older people and other vulnerable groups.
The latest recommendation from the World Health Organization indicates that additional doses beyond the first two and a booster are not routinely recommended in older people and in high-risk groups, such as those with other diseases.
About 14% of those who weren’t interested in getting the booster said it because they already had COVID, while another 14% said they thought their previous vaccines presented enough protection. About 3% said their age group did not want the vaccine.
The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 has increased in recent weeks, but remains well below levels seen in the dark days of the pandemic between 2020 and early 2022.
OVERALL CONCERN LOW
Some 54% of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they were “personally” involved with the spread of the virus, up from 77% in a vote three years ago. At the height of the pandemic, in early 2020, around 90% of respondents were involved.
Nearly 42% said they basically wanted to get vaccinated to reduce the risk of becoming seriously ill.
Demand for the vaccine dropped dramatically after 2021, when it first became available, and more than 240 million people in the United States, or 73% of the population, received at least one shot. During the last revaccination campaign, when the maximum in America had already contracted the COVID virus or had been vaccinated previously, only about 56. 5 million people got the updated booster shots, according to CDC data. That’s well below the annual market for flu vaccines in the U. S. The U. S. vaccine, which is about 160 million vaccines.
COVID-19 vaccines have also disrupted U. S. politics, with many Republicans viewing the vaccination push as government overreach. Only 34 percent of Republicans said they would be interested in receiving the updated vaccine, compared with 77 percent of Democrats. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, on Wednesday suggested his state’s citizens under 65 not get vaccinated.
About 36% of people who weren’t interested in the vaccine said the main reason was that they considered the vaccine dangerous, and another 5% said they didn’t believe COVID made other people sick.
“I worry that more than 30% think it’s harmful when there’s no credible evidence of it and yet there’s a lot of misinformation and, frankly, alarmism,” said Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in Washington. . and former chief scientist of the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. U. S.
“This illustrates the combination of incorrect information and anxiety,” he said.
The Reuters/Ipsos vote, conducted online and nationally Sept. 8-14, collected responses from 4,413 U. S. adults. It had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of about 2 percentage points.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Jason Lange in Washington; additional reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Jennifer Rigthrough in London; editing by Scott Malone and Leslie Adler)
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