INCREASING VACCINE HESITANCY AMONG RESPONDENTS

Prof. V. Vidhya, Department of MBA, Sankara College of Science and Commerce

Covid 19 is the Pandemic situation prevailing still all over the world. We hear vaccines have come up and we also hear the side effects that are also shooting up in high degree among the public who had got the vaccine shots. Also we hear the side effects allergic reaction to the Astra-Zeneca- Oxford Covid 19 vaccine and more recently to the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine. People are now confused if they really should do for vaccine or it will be better if they wait for herd immunity to build up.The problems in these vaccines are really hyped up through medias and it is the struggle of our people to really come back to normal life after months of physical distancing, sanitizing and loads of death due to Covid 19. Our Government is also striving hard to be more careful in the regulatory process of releasing the vaccine. DCGI (Drug Controller Government of India)has asked for more valuable information’s on other vaccine companies filling for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA’S). Also world wide EMA (European Medicine Agency) had planned a virtual meeting to discuss the effects and side effects of Covid 19 vaccines. Apart from this, two surveys revealed that general public and health care workers are becoming hesitant to get the vaccine shots by hearing information’s which were not proved to be true as far now.Among general public one survey says that nearly 48% of male population are willing to get vaccinated but remaining 42% of female population are reluctant to get shots. As this is the case in gender, expectedly with age the willingness to take vaccines is also got reduced. This may be due to the concerns about complications after taking the shots.To understand public perceptions another survey was done and when looking the results it was revealed that many of them believe that they are moving towards herd immunity, few of them say that Indians in general have high immunity and the rest say Covid 19 virus is weakening, cases are reducing by following Government norms and at last people also believe that cases are not been found out via testing.To conclude, it’s high time for the Government to convince the general public about the need to vaccinate and not to believe on rumors about the side effects of the Covid 19 vaccine. Any vaccine will have a mild side effect but it can be handled by our body metabolism. Many vaccines like Polio, MMR, DPT etc., are duly tested and we using it till now. It’s the time to find role models who will walk the talk. In US, 3 former Presidents have expressed their willingness to get vaccinated. Similar strategy can be adopted in India also so that general public will get confidence on the Covid 19 Vaccine.