Researchers have delved into the reasons some Kiwis remain hesitant about vaccines, in a first-of-its-kind study ultimately hoped to help boost uptake in New Zealand. Photo / Warren Buckland
Researchers have delved into the reasons some Kiwis remain hesitant about vaccines, in a first-of-its-kind study ultimately hoped to help boost uptake in New Zealand. Photo / Warren Buckland
Researchers have delved into the reasons some Kiwis remain hesitant about vaccines, in a first-of-its-kind study ultimately hoped to help boost uptake in New Zealand.
Well before Covid-19 brought “vaccine hesitancy” and the tide of disinformation swirling about it to the fore, it’d already been hampering immunisation efforts.
In 2019, just a few months before the pandemic began, health authorities were already battling a measles outbreak that’d come amid a global resurgence in the highly-contagious disease – partly a result of anti-vaccine sentiment spread across social media.
Four years on – and even with New Zealand achieving one of the world’s highest vaccination rates against Covid-19 – experts say the need to understand the factors behind vaccine concern remained as great as ever.
“We’ve seen all of the misinformation and disinformation circulating about vaccines, so we thought, how do we best counter that and which areas do we prioritise?” said Dr Amy Chan, of the University of Auckland.
In a just-published study, based on a survey of more than 600 people between late 2021 and early 2022, Chan and colleagues have provided a first glimpse at what mattered most to Kiwis in deciding whether to get the vaccine.
“We were able to narrow it down to 13 different attributes that people wanted to know about the vaccine, and then ask them to rank them.”
University of Auckland pharmacist Dr Amy Chan. Photo / Brett Phibbs / PhibbsVisuals
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the risk of severe side effects was viewed as the most important factor (11.3 per cent), alongside the vaccine’s effectiveness (11.2 per cent) and its duration of protection (9.7 per cent).
At the other end of the scale, the respondents ranked the vaccines’ development time, its place of origin and how it was administered as least important.
Interestingly, while previous research had highlighted the significance of mild adverse effects in influencing vaccine uptake, the study found this similarly ranked low (6.5 per cent) among participants.
Delving deeper, the researchers explored links between these factors and how highly people scored on a measure of vaccine conspiracy beliefs.
Those who scored highly on those beliefs placed comparably more importance in the vaccine’s development time and number of doses given, while those who scored low were more interested in how effective the vaccine was.
Chan said that, although the study captured a single snapshot in time, its results were relevant to healthcare workers today.
“It definitely tells us a lot about how we need to frame our messaging,” she said.
“If we ever had to promote vaccination at the same level again, this really shows us what information health professionals and vaccinators need to be promoting.
“It’s certainly important that we talk about risk – and particularly that there’s very, very low risk of severe side effects.”
“The XBB vaccine is more effective against more recent subvariants of Covid-19 in New Zealand,” Pharmac’s Geraldine MacGibbon said of the booster, which will be available to Kiwis over 30 from March 7.
Fewer than 20 per cent of eligible Kiwis aged 34 to 49 had received their second booster, with uptake rates for the top-up also low (40.2 per cent) among 50-to-64-year-olds.
This month, scientists also published results of the world’s largest study to date on Covid-19 vaccines, covering nearly 100 million people across eight countries.
While it was able to link some neurological, blood and heart-related medical conditions to the vaccine, these were extremely rare, and far outweighed by the benefits of vaccination, the researchers said.
For instance, Australian data showed acute disseminated encephalomyelitis – or inflammation and swelling in the brain and spinal cord – accounted for about 0.78 cases per million vaccines.
Usefully, the study was also able to identify pre-established safety signals for conditions including myocarditis, pericarditis and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
“By making the data dashboards publicly available, we are able to support greater transparency, and stronger communications to the health sector and public,” she said.
Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.
