Vaccination to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged as a promising measure to overcome the negative consequences of the pandemic. Since university students could be considered a ...knowledgeable group, this study aimed to evaluate COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among this group in Jordan. Additionally, we aimed to examine the association between vaccine conspiracy beliefs and vaccine hesitancy. We used an online survey conducted in January 2021 with a chain-referral sampling approach. Conspiracy beliefs were evaluated using the validated Vaccine Conspiracy Belief Scale (VCBS), with higher scores implying embrace of conspiracies. A total of 1106 respondents completed the survey with female predominance (
= 802, 72.5%). The intention to get COVID-19 vaccines was low: 34.9% (yes) compared to 39.6% (no) and 25.5% (maybe). Higher rates of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance were seen among males (42.1%) and students at Health Schools (43.5%). A Low rate of influenza vaccine acceptance was seen as well (28.8%), in addition to 18.6% of respondents being anti-vaccination altogether. A significantly higher VCBS score was correlated with reluctance to get the vaccine (
< 0.001). Dependence on social media platforms was significantly associated with lower intention to get COVID-19 vaccines (19.8%) compared to dependence on medical doctors, scientists, and scientific journals (47.2%,
< 0.001). The results of this study showed the high prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and its association with conspiracy beliefs among university students in Jordan. The implementation of targeted actions to increase the awareness of such a group is highly recommended. This includes educational programs to dismantle vaccine conspiracy beliefs and awareness campaigns to build recognition of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
Vaccine hesitancy is one of the major obstacles for successfully combating the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve a sufficiently high vaccination rate, calls for compulsory vaccinations have been ...discussed controversially. This study analyses what drives citizens’ attitudes towards compulsory vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we are interested in the impact of party- and expert cues on public attitudes. We further expect populist attitudes to be an important indicator of the rejection of compulsory vaccination due to their scepticism towards science. To test these expectations, we rely on a cueing experiment conducted on a sample of 2265 German citizens. We test for the effects of in-party and out-party cues as well as public health expert cues. We find evidence for in-party cues, meaning that respondents adjust their position on this issue in the direction of their most preferred party. Similar results can be found for public health expert cues. However, there is no evidence for out-party cues. Further analyses reveal that support for compulsory vaccinations is not affected by left-right placement directly. Instead, only the combination of right-wing attitudes and populism negatively affects support for compulsory vaccination.
•8 more vaccines have been mandatory in France, bringing the total to 11.•We describe how vaccines became contentious in France in the past 20 years.•The 2016 citizen consultation on vaccination led ...to the extension of mandates.
France is one of the countries with the highest prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in the world. In an attempt to raise vaccination coverages, the French government made on January 1, 2018 eight more vaccines mandatory in addition to the three required until then. The process that led to this policy choice is of particular interest. We describe how vaccines became contentious in France and how French authorities came to view mandatory vaccination as the solution to the rise in vaccine hesitancy. In a bold move, French public health authorities turned to a new type of institutional device grounded in the ideal of democracy and public participation to political decision-making: “a citizen consultation”. This consultation anchored the idea that legal coercion could be the solution to France’s crisis with vaccines. Time will tell whether the French extension of mandatory vaccination will reduce tensions around vaccines.
Informed consent, which is primarily aimed at encouraging individual patients and subjects of scientific research to make autonomous decisions, and public health measures, such as compulsory ...vaccination against infectious diseases, the successfulness of which implies harmonized administration of vaccines to a broad population, seem to be irreconcilable opposites at first glance. This paper deals with investigating whether these opposites can reconcile or whether informed consent can be applied in the field of public health. The first part of the paper provides a short overview of the main features of informed consent and its relevance in treating individual patients. The second part of the paper tackles the issue of immunization. If not provided with consent of their patients or having a legal obligation, physicians are believed to interfere with the bodily integrity of other people when conducting vaccination and their act can be deemed as an assault and entail non-pecuniary damage compensation. Herd immunity as a “public good” can only be achieved if all people are equally subject to public health measures. At this point, the key question is if informed consent and appertaining freedom of decision-making represent a threat to the accomplishment of this public health goal. This question should truly be answered since vaccination may, though rarely, bring to medical complications, which may then lead to high treatment costs, loss of income and extremely rare, to death. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that disclosure of the risks and benefits of immunization within the framework of public health programmes could contribute to putting the fundamental bioethical postulates into practice: establishing and fostering mutual trust between physicians and their patients, which can, in the end, contribute to a higher immunization rate of a population.
Informirani pristanak, koji prvenstveno ima za cilj potaknuti pojedine pacijente i subjekte znanstvenog istraživanja na donošenje autonomnih odluka, i javnozdravstvene mjere poput obveznog cijepljenja protiv zaraznih bolesti, čija uspješnost podrazumijeva usklađenu distribuciju cjepiva široj populaciji, čine se na prvi pogled kao nepomirljive suprotnosti. Rad istražuje mogu li se te suprotnosti pomiriti, tj. može li se informirani pristanak primijeniti u području javnog zdravstva. U prvom dijelu rada daje se kratak pregled glavnih značajki informiranog pristanka i njegove važnosti u liječenju pacijenata. Drugi dio rada bavi se pitanjem imunizacije. Ako nemaju pristanak pacijenata i ne postoji zakonska obveza cijepljenja, smatra se da liječnici prilikom cijepljenja zadiru u tjelesni integritet drugih osoba te se njihov čin može smatrati napadom i povlačiti naknadu nematerijalne štete. Imunitet krda kao “javno dobro” može se postići samo ako svi ljudi podjednako podliježu javnozdravstvenim mjerama. U ovom trenutku, ključno je pitanje predstavljaju li informirani pristanak i pripadajuća sloboda odlučivanja prijetnju ostvarivanju ovog javnozdravstvenog cilja. Na ovo pitanje doista treba odgovoriti jer cijepljenje može, iako rijetko, dovesti do medicinskih komplikacija, koje potom mogu dovesti do visokih troškova liječenja, gubitka prihoda i, iznimno rijetko, do smrti. Svrha ovog rada je pokazati da bi otkrivanje rizika i dobrobiti imunizacije u okviru javnozdravstvenih programa moglo pridonijeti provođenju temeljnih bioetičkih postulata u praksi: uspostavljanju i njegovanju međusobnog povjerenja između liječnika i pacijenata, što sve može pridonijeti višoj stopi procijepljenosti stanovništva.
U predmetnom izlaganju pokušava se sagledati nekoliko elemenata: 1. u kolikom opsegu javnopravna tijela mogu prisiliti građane na obvezno cijepljenje; 2. što o obveznom cijepljenju kazuje Ustav ...Francuske Republike, Europska konvencija za zaštitu ljudskih prava i temeljnih sloboda, nacionalno zakonodavstvo te relevantna sudska praksa.
This presentation examines several elements: 1. to what extent public bodies can force citizens
to undergo compulsory vaccination; 2. what the Constitution of the French Republic, the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, national legislation and
relevant judicial practice say about compulsory vaccination.
Between August and September 2021, the European Court of Human Rights rejected three requests for interim measures against France and Greece's compulsory vaccination statutes against COVID-19. Due to ...the procedural nature of the interim measures, however, the status of vaccine mandates against SARS-CoV-2 under the European Convention of Human Rights has not been addressed. The paper argues that COVID-19 compulsory vaccination is consistent with both the text and the original understanding of Article 8 of the Convention. Moreover, considering pertinent case law on medical mandatory treatments, COVID-19 vaccine mandates should also square with the European Court of Human Right's "living instrument" doctrine. For this reason, it is expected that the European Court of Human rights will uphold COVID-19 vaccination programs. At the same time, it would be beneficial if more Council of Europe member states triggered Article 15 derogation mechanism in order to make an even stronger case for fast-track developed vaccines and contrast vaccine hesitancy.
In the decades following the discovery of the bacillus causing typhoid, in 1880, understanding of the disease formerly known as enteric fever was transformed, offering new possibilities for ...prevention. Gradually, measures that aimed to prevent infection from human carriers were developed, as were inoculations designed to confer immunity against typhoid and paratyphoid fevers. These were initially introduced in European armies that were regularly ravaged by typhoid, especially garrisons stationed in the colonies. This article reviews the research undertaken in the armed forces and the measures that they implemented in the years up to and during the First World War.
The article is based on an analytical review of scientific literature from the early 19th century, focusing on the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
The armies of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France undertook important work on the transmission of typhoid in the years between 1890 and 1918. Many preventive measures were introduced to deal with the spread of typhoid but these varied between the 3 countries, depending largely on their political traditions. Inoculation was particularly successful in preventing typhoid and greatly reduced the number of casualties from this disease during the First World War. Despite this, it proved difficult to prevent paratyphoid infection, and debates continued over which vaccines to use and whether or not immunization should be voluntary.
By the end of the First World War, the value of inoculation in preventing the spread of typhoid had been proven. Its successful implementation demonstrates the importance of vaccination as a public health intervention during times of conflict and social upheaval.
The aim of the study is to understand the evolution of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance over the key 7-month vaccine campaign in Italy, a period in which the country moved from candidate vaccines to ...products administered to the public. The research focus points to evaluate COVID-19 vaccine attitudes in adults and their children, propension towards compulsory vaccination, past and present adherence to anti-flu and anti-pneumococcal vaccines, and the reasons for trust/mistrust of vaccines.
Italian residents aged 16->65 years were invited to complete an online survey from September 2020 to April 2021. The survey contained 13 questions: 3 on demographic data; 8 on vaccine attitudes; and 2 open-ended questions about the reasons of vaccine confidence/refusal. A preliminary word frequency analysis has been conducted, as well as a statistical bivariate analysis.
Of 21.537 participants, the confidence of those in favor of the COVID-19 vaccine increases of 50 % and the number of people who wanted more information decreases by two-third. Willingness to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 also increased from 51 % to 66.5 %. Only one-third of the strong vaccine-hesitant participants, i.e. 10 %, remained hostile. Compulsory vaccination showed a large and increasing favor by participants up to 78 %, in a way similar to their propensity for children’s mandatory vaccination (70.6 %). Respondents’ past and present adherence to anti-flu and anti-pneumococcal vaccines does not predict their intentions to vaccinate against COVID-19. Finally, a semantic analysis of the reasons of acceptance/refusal of COVID-19 vaccination suggests a complex decision-making process revealed by the participants’ use of common words in pro-and-cons arguments.
The heterogeneity in the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, determinants and opinions detected at different ages, genders and pandemic phases suggests that health authorities should avoid one-size-fits-all vaccination campaigns. The results emphasize the long-term importance of reinforcing vaccine information, communication and education needs.
Mandatory vaccinations are widely debated since they restrict individuals' autonomy in their health decisions. As healthcare professionals (HCPs) are a common target group of vaccine mandates, and ...also form a link between vaccination policies and the public, understanding their attitudes toward vaccine mandates is important. The present study investigated physicians' attitudes to COVID-19 vaccine mandates in four European countries: Finland, France, Germany, and Portugal. An electronic survey assessing attitudes to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and general vaccination attitudes (e.g. perceived vaccine safety, trust in health authorities, and openness to patients) was sent to physicians in the spring of 2022. A total of 2796 physicians responded. Across all countries, 78% of the physicians were in favor of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for HCPs, 49% favored COVID-19 vaccine mandates for the public, and 67% endorsed COVID-19 health passes. Notable differences were observed between countries, with attitudes to mandates found to be more positive in countries where the mandate, or similar mandates, were in effect. The associations between attitudes to mandates and general vaccination attitudes were mostly small to neglectable and differed between countries. Nevertheless, physicians with more positive mandate attitudes perceived vaccines as more beneficial (in Finland and France) and had greater trust in medical authorities (in France and Germany). The present study contributes to the body of research within social and behavioral sciences that support evidence-based vaccination policymaking.
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