Vaccine hesitancy is a reality
46 per cent of the respondents said either they do not want to take the vaccine at all or refused to answer the question
PRASHNAM INSIGHT #33
Covid vaccination is slowly gathering steam after a brief lull in the supply of stipulated doses last month. Hopefully, it would be at the desirable level of 50 lakhs doses per day in the coming fortnight. But there is more to the vaccination story than just the supply bottlenecks. It is vaccine hesitancy. It had struck early in one of the Prashnam surveys. So, Prashnam decided to delve further into this. Prashnam asked the non-vaccinated adults across 6 Hindi speaking states the following question.
Why have you still not got at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine?
1. I do not want to take the vaccine at all.
2. Not able to get an appointment for the vaccine.
3. I do not know.
54% of those who have not yet taken a dose of vaccine are not able to get an appointment. There are still many people who are hesitant to take the vaccine. 16% of the people who have not yet taken the vaccine, do not want to take the vaccine at all. India continues to battle its woes regarding shortages in vaccine supply, glitches in online vaccination appointments, the disparity in allocation to states etc. But vaccine hesitancy seems chronic to some of the Indians which will need swift efforts regarding vaccine awareness.
Also, the majority (54%) of the respondents are not able to get an appointment for the vaccine. It is heartening to know that the government has removed the mandatory Cowin registration for receiving vaccines.
Respondent profile
4704 adult Indians responded to this survey. They were from 6 states - Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh belonging to 229 districts. 68 per cent were male and 32 per cent female. 56 per cent were youth (<40 years), 32 per cent middle-aged and 12 per cent seniors (>60).
Read the full report in The Print here
The raw response data is available here.