This report is an update of our February report on attitudes and vaccination rates of healthcare workers. The essential patterns are similar, with the obvious exception being the increased rates of vaccination. We focus on vaccination, vaccine resistance, vaccine hesitancy, vaccine access, and vaccine refusal. These are measured as follows:
Vaccination status is based on self-reports that someone has “already” been vaccinated. Note that we do not ask whether someone has received one or two doses of a vaccine, or which vaccine they have received.
Vaccine resistance is the proportion of individuals in a given category who indicate that they “would not get the COVID-19 vaccine” if/when it is available to them.
Vaccine hesitancy is defined as preferring to get the vaccine “after at least some people I know” or “after most people I know.”
Vaccine access considers those in one of the high priority groups—individuals 65 and older or healthcare workers—who report having the vaccine available to them. This is defined as anyone in this group who says they have already been vaccinated or have a vaccine available to them (regardless of whether they have been vaccinated).
Vaccine refusal is when an individual in a high priority group reports having the vaccine available to them, but that they will not get vaccinated.
Vaccination rates are higher among healthcare workers than among non-healthcare workers;1 however, vaccine resistance (24% for healthcare workers versus 21% for non-healthcare workers) and hesitancy rates (29% versus 31%) are nearly identical (see Figure 1).
Vaccine resistance has remained level since January for both healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers; however, hesitancy has dropped substantially for both groups since January (from 37% to 29% among healthcare workers, and from 41% to 31% for non-healthcare workers). This suggests that as the vaccine campaign moves forward, as one would expect, there has been a gradual shift from those who are vaccine hesitant to being willing to be vaccinated.
