A Survey on the Potential Acceptance, Knowledge and Attitude Regarding
the COVID-19 Vaccine: A Cross Sectional Study in Assam, North-East,
India.
Abstract
Aim: Along with Assam, India’s mass vaccination drive is witnessing a
low turnout situation. This study aims to identify limiting factors to
the vaccination effort, attitude towards COVID-19, and attitude towards
the vaccine. During the survey, doubts of the participants on COVID-19
vaccine were also addressed. Subject and Methods: It was a
cross-sectional web and physical interview based survey using validated
questionnaire developed in the google form to assess 695 voluntary
participants of Assam, India. Results: 52.09% of the participants were
acceptable to COVID-19 vaccine, and 21.30% participants were
vaccinated. About 41.87% of the respondents were hesitating to get
vaccinated, and 10.64% of the participants refused. Education shows
inverse relation to vaccine hesitancy. Interestingly, housewives were
found to be hesitating the most (OR = 5.113, 95CI% = 1.347-19.399, p =
0.016). Retired person (OR = 4.061, 95CI% = 1.464 – 11.262, p = 0.007)
and 60 plus age group (OR = 0.373, 95CI% = 0.153 – 0.911, p = 0.031)
show a refusal to the vaccine. 99.7% of the participants have taken at
least one preventive measures depicts there is a positive attitude
towards COVID-19. Digital knowledge is one of the important aspects
associated with participants getting vaccinated (p > 0.05).
Conclusion: There are concerns about COVID-19 vaccine safety and its
efficacy. Government-sponsored awareness programme or non-governmental
organization (NGO) can launch awareness programmes to shed light on
critical areas to eliminate vaccine-related doubts. Key sources of
information can be used to channel authentic information to narrow down
the anti-vaccine folks.