Misinformation and politics have been found to be among the two causes for the lack of trust in the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
A YouGov study that covered 48,000 people in 38 countries in June 2021, found respondents had contrasting levels of trust in vaccines in different countries.
Several European leaders had voiced criticism on the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine which was found to be unfounded which was believed to have contributed to the lower trust in European Union countries compared to the UK, where it was highest.
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Infectious diseases specialist at Cardiff University(UK), Dr. Andrew Freedman, said the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab had attracted negative publicity. He said that it had a bad press though for some of the coronavirus variants the AstraZeneca vaccine has slightly reduced efficacy compared to the RNA vaccines.
He said it was not expected that the vaccines would be developed quickly. As per the study, Russia’s Sputnik V was given a negative safety rating in 11 countries despite being deemed effective even against the Delta variant.
The support for Sinopharm in the UAE was higher than in any other countries surveyed.
Prof John Oxford, emeritus professor of virology at Queen Mary University of London, said the results of vaccination campaigns were generally “very pleasing” and he was “impressed” with the whole bunch of vaccines.
In the survey, people were asked if they viewed particular vaccines as safe or unsafe and net rating for each brand was reached by subtracting the percentage who regarded it as unsafe from those who considered it safe. The study found Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine achieved the highest result with a net 79 per cent positive score in Singapore while in the UAE, the vaccine had a net 67 percent positive rating and in Saudi Arabia the figure stood at 61 per cent.
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The lowest score in Bulgaria was found to be at net 22 per cent positive while mRNA vaccine from Moderna achieved positive ratings in all countries surveyed. Also three adenoviral vector vaccines, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson (also known as Janssen) and Sputnik V each achieved a net positive safety rating in most countries surveyed.
Also among the nine nations where the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab was perceived as unsafe the most extreme result was in Bulgaria with a net 36 per cent negative result while it rated net 62 per cent positive in the UK, where it was developed.
The jab score was a net 30 per cent negative rating in Denmark. While rare cases of serious and sometimes fatal blood clots were reported among Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson recipients, some nations stopped using these vaccines and others restricted their use to people from particular age groups. There were however no concerns over blood clotting with Sputnik V. (AW)
