COVID-19 | What makes Peruvians decide to get vaccinated (and what doesn’t)?

The country has exceeded 50% of its target population vaccinated against COVID-19. But the goal, according to various Models epidemiological, is to reach at least 80% of the population.

According to the Ministry of Health (Minsa), in the country there are still more than and another percentage that, having the option to get vaccinated, the first dose is not applied.

What makes a person decide to get vaccinated? What are the reasons behind this decision? Instead, what makes a person decide not to get immunized? A study published in August in the Peruvian Journal of Experimental Medicine and Public Health provides some clues.

Researchers analyzed the attitude towards vaccines among Peruvians, through an online survey carried out in January of this year, when the vaccination campaign had not yet started and we were in the middle of the second wave. What was the main finding? At that moment,

The survey was sourced from a database produced by the University of Maryland and Facebook. The sample included users of the social network 18 years and older who responded to the survey between January 15 and February 1. Total,

“As Peru is a country that has been hit hard by the pandemic, we wanted to know if there was a We found that three out of four people surveyed intended to be vaccinated “, says the doctor Diego Urrunaga-Pastor, associated with the Southern Scientific University and one of the authors of the study.

Because vaccines were the target of criticism and disinformation campaigns in the country and around the world, the authors expected the acceptance figures to be lower than what they eventually found: “[El hallazgo] caught our attention, but [hay que considerar] that ; there is a vaccination schedule that begins with children ”.

The result is similar to that obtained in other studies, such as one published in Nature before the start of immunization campaigns around the world and which included 19 countries. In that job, 71.5% said they had a very high or some chance of accepting the COVID-19 vaccine.

An analysis of the intention, perceptions and doubts about the COVID-19 vaccine in Latin America and the Caribbean, published in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease in the middle of this year and that analyzed the responses of more than 470 thousand adults, he found

Recent surveys – carried out when the campaign had advanced in the country – showed one towards vaccines in Peru: from 40 to 11%, according to Minsa.

What motivates us to get vaccinated (and what doesn’t)?

Although the article addresses the attitude towards vaccination at the beginning of the year and shows us a ‘photograph of the moment’, before the Vacunagate case, for example, it does provide information regarding

Here we detail the factors associated with a greater or lesser intention to be vaccinated (IDV):

“We were struck by the role that some close people could have, such as friends and families. [en la intención de vacunarse], but also some other actors, for example, to, but not political figures, says researcher Diego Urrunaga-Pastor.

An important finding is that of the total of respondents, but, despite this, a large part of them were in favor of receiving the vaccine.

The authors consider, based on their results, that “There are potentially modifiable factors that could improve vaccine acceptance.”

According to Urrunaga-Pastor, “It is necessary to incorporate important actors [en la campaña de vacunación] that they can , in order to achieve a greater vaccination intention ”.

“It is important to know the factors associated with the intention to vaccinate in order to know what could be used to implement effective communication strategies”, Add.

For the research team, it is important that additional studies are carried out at this time in order to know how the factors associated with the intention to vaccinate have changed over the months.

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