Perception Towards COVID-19 Vaccination-A Cross-Sectional Study in Iraq

INTRODUCTION: The current COVID-19 pandemic has urged the scientific community globally to find answers in terms of therapeutics including vaccination to control the disease. Various COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed in many countries, including Iraq. Vaccination program will only be successful when there are high rates of acceptance and coverage. Thus, to accomplish this program, it is critical to understand the perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine and its acceptance. Therefore, our study was performed to investigate community perceptions towards COVID-19 vaccinations in Iraq. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Iraq from March 2021 to June 2021. We enrolled a total of 9,620 participants (3,160 men and 6,460 women). The participants responded to an online survey on COVID-19 vaccination which consisted of three sections of questionnaires. The first section (Section A) was on demographic characteristics of respondents including age, gender, occupation, level of education, and residency whereas the second section (Section B) was on the respondent’s perception toward COVID-19 vaccine, with nine inquiries about reasons for fearing COVID-19 vaccine. The final section (Section C) was questions on the type of vaccine they prefer to receive, once it is made available. RESULTS: Of the total respondents, 70.68% were not keen for a COVID-19 vaccination. Some of the respondents’ concerns were that the vaccines are not safe and may cause infection with COVID-19, infertility, congenital infection, and fetal anomalies. Majority of respondents who accepted to be vaccinated trusted the Pfizer vaccine followed by Sinopharm vaccine. CONCLUSION: Hesitancy for COVID-19 vaccination among participants were mainly due to lack of trust in the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and also feared of being infected and death. Thus, the healthcare providers and community leaders should come out with strategies to decrease the hesitancy and increase the acceptability of the vaccines.