Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal among Egyptian Parents: An Online Survey Study | ||||
| The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine | ||||
| Article 56, Volume 90, Issue 1, January 2023, Page 393-400 PDF (556.21 K) | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejhm.2023.279623 | ||||
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| Authors | ||||
Hend Gomaa   ; Shymaa Abdu
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| Public Health and Community Medicine Department, Faculty of medicine, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Background: Because COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing, it is critical to immunize the majority of people, including children, in order to achieve herd immunity. Objective: The study aimed to estimate prevalence of pediatric COVID-19 vaccine refusal among parents and to explore factors affecting it. Methods: An online cross-sectional survey of 189 parents was conducted. Data were collected using a pre-structured questionnaire about parents' socio-demographic characteristics, COVID-19 knowledge, level of concern about reinfection, parents' willingness to vaccinate their children, and the importance of vaccine to their own and community health. To identify predictors of vaccine refusal, binary logistic regression was used. Results: The majority of parents (61.9%) refused the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine. Binary logistic regression analysis showed that male parents (AOR= 10.18,95), those tested negative (AOR=26.27), those not worried from reinfection (AOR= 15.23), those felt anxious more than half the days (AOR=10.64), nearly every day (AOR= 15) and those who thought that the vaccine was not important for their own health (AOR=11.93) and for protecting health of other people (AOR=4.05) were significantly more likely to refuse the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine. 73.5% and 63.2% of parents had fear of vaccine side effects and thought that vaccine isn’t effective, respectively. Conclusion: Pediatric COVID-19 vaccines are opposed by two-thirds of parents. Fear of vaccine side effects and belief that the vaccine is not effective are the most common reasons for vaccine rejection. As a result, health education for those parents and future longitudinal studies exploring the factors influencing parents' refusal of the COVID-19 vaccine are recommended. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| COVID-19 vaccines; Children; parents | ||||
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