Dataset Information

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and influential factors among Thai parents and guardians to vaccinate their children.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The ongoing COVID-19 has had a huge worldwide influence. Vaccinations are a crucial component of illness prevention. Thailand's vaccination program for children above the age of five is in its initial stages. Many Thai parents are still unwilling to vaccinate their children with the COVID-19 vaccine. The purpose of this study was to analyze the rate of parental hesitancy and influential variables among Thai parents and guardians living in Thailand.

Methods

This was a cross-sectional survey in Thailand during October and November of 2021. Through online social media networks, an online survey (REDcap) was distributed. Thai parents and guardians with at least one child under the age of 18 were invited to participate.

Results

A total of 1064 responses for analysis. One thousand and sixty-four were available for analysis with 74.4% of those who participated being female. The results found that the parental COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy rate was higher among parents with children under the age of 12 than among parents with children over the age of 12. (56.9% vs 17.1%, p-value < 0.001). Parents were more concerned about vaccination side effects (82.5%), safety (60.0%), and vaccine efficacy (37.2%). Low vaccine reluctance among parent with children age less than 12 years old was associated with higher education (aOR = 0.35, 95 %CI = 0.13-0.93, p-value = 0.036) and a favorable attitude regarding covid-19 immunizations (aOR 0.16, 95% CI 0.04-0.67, p-value 0.012).

Conclusion

The majority of Thai parents with children under the age of 12 were hesitant to vaccinate against COVID-19. To minimize Thai parent vaccination hesitancy and increase vaccine uptake among children, the government and health care providers should target this population with evidence-based information, promote positive attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations, and encourage educated parents to vaccinate their children at first.

SUBMITTER: Kitro A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9190183 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Objectives: In autumn 2021, there was a surge of COVID-19 infections in Austria, and vaccination coverage stagnated at a below-average level compared to the rest of Europe. Surveys showed that both children and adolescents were the main drivers of the rising infection rates and that vaccination numbers were particularly low in this age group. This was due to widespread vaccination skepticism and hesitancy among parents of unvaccinated children and adolescents. Methods: Here, we describe a novel intervention concept that allowed us to efficiently tackle parental vaccine hesitancy. We designed an intervention series that followed a reproducible format based on online face-to-face seminars in groups of a maximum of twenty people. Each seminar included an anonymous online questionnaire for internal quality control. Moreover, we assessed the motives of parental vaccine hesitancy and asked participants to rate subjective vaccine willingness for their children on a scale of zero to ten. Results: Within 8 weeks, more than 580 people participated in the seminar series. We found that concerns about the side effects of the vaccine were the predominant motive of vaccination hesitancy among the study population. Overall, the intervention could successfully increase the median parental vaccination willingness of participants from a score of five to eight. We identified tree hesitancy motives (distrust towards the pharmaceutical industry, the government, or feelings of restriction from personal freedom) that were associated with below-average vaccination willingness and significant lower increase. Conclusion: With this study we analyzed motives driving COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy among parents of unvaccinated children and reasons of parents to restrain their children from getting vaccinated. The intervention method described here, could effectively address individual concerns on a personal level while at the same time reach a large number of people across geographical and language barriers. Thereby we could significantly increase subjective vaccination willingness of the participants. Our approach is easy to apply, highly cost-effective, and can be used to tackle any kind of medical misinformation.