Vaccine scepticism: Anti-vaccine sentiment may be softening as vaccine roll-outs gather pace

Vaccine scepticism: Anti-vaccine sentiment may be softening as vaccine roll-outs gather pace

3/30/21 8:00PM

As vaccination programmes around the world gather steam, they appear to be reducing not just COVID cases, but vaccine scepticism itself.

In October of last year an IPSOS poll in 14 countries found a significant amount of scepticism about taking vaccines. A more recent poll, from the end of February, has found that in 10 of those 14 countries, the proportion of people that agree they would get a COVID-19 vaccine were it available has gone up. In some cases, such as Italy and Spain, quite substantially so.

In the UK, where more than half of the adult population has now had a vaccine dose, 87% of those polled would now agree to a vaccine, up from 79% in October, before the vaccine drive began. In the US, the change in attitudes has been modest, up just 1 point.‍

Je suis (still) sceptique

‍In France just 54% of those polled "agreed" that they would get a COVID vaccine, were it available back in October. The latest poll has seen that number increase to 59%, but it still leaves France as the most vaccine-sceptic of the 14 polled.

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