Survey: Delta fear pushes people in US to get shots
Many unvaccinated say boosters show jabs aren’t working
The delta variant was the main reason that people decided to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this summer and why most say they will get boosters when eligible, according to the latest monthly survey on vaccine attitudes by the Kaiser Family Foundation, released Tuesday morning.
But the survey also indicated that nearly three-quarters of unvaccinated Americans say the need for boosters shows that the vaccines are not working.
That divide suggests that while it may be relatively easy to persuade vaccinated people to line up for an additional shot, the need for boosters may complicate public health officials’ efforts to persuade the remaining unvaccinated people to get their first.
Another takeaway from the Kaiser Family Foundation survey: For all the carrots dangled to induce hesitant people to get COVID shots — cash, doughnuts, racetrack privileges — more credit for the recent rise in vaccination goes to the stick. Almost 40% of newly inoculated people said that they had sought the vaccines because of the increase in COVID-19 cases, with more than a third saying that they had become alarmed by overcrowding in hospitals and rising death rates.
“When a theoretical threat becomes a clear and present danger, people are more likely to act to protect themselves and their loved ones,” said Drew Altman, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s chief executive.
The nationally representative survey of 1,519 people was conducted Sept. 13-22 — during a time of surging COVID-19 deaths, but before the government authorized boosters for millions of high-risk people who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, including those 65 and over and adults of any age whose job puts them at high risk of infection.
Sweeteners did have some role in getting shots in arms. One-third of respondents said that they had gotten vaccinated to travel or attend events where the shots were required.
Two reasons often cited as important for motivating those hesitant to get a vaccine — employer mandates (about 20%) and full federal approval for the Pfizer vaccine (15%) — carried less sway.
Seventy-two percent of adults in the survey said that they were at least partly vaccinated, up from 67% in late July. The latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are even higher, reporting 77% of the adult population in the United States with at least one shot. The sharpest change in this month was in vaccination rates for Latinos: a jump of 12 percentage points since late July, to 73%, in the number of Latino adults who had received at least one shot.
With the vaccination racial gap narrowing, the political divide has, by far, become the widest, with 90% of Democrats saying that they have gotten at least one dose, compared with 58% of Republicans.
Meanwhile, Pfizer and BioNTech announced Tuesday that they had submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration showing that their coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective in children ages 5 to 11.
The companies said that they would submit a formal request to regulators to allow a pediatric dose of their vaccine to be administered in the United States in the coming weeks. Similar requests will be filed with European regulators and in other countries.
Pfizer and BioNTech announced favorable results from their clinical trial with more than 2,200 participants in that age group just over a week ago. The FDA has said that it will analyze the data as soon as possible.
The companies said last week their vaccine had been shown to be safe and effective in low doses in children ages 5 to 11, offering hope to parents in the United States who are worried that a return to in-person schooling has put youngsters at risk of infection.
About 28 million children ages 5 to 11 would be eligible for the vaccine in the United States, far more than the 17 million of ages 12 to 15 who became eligible for the vaccine in May.
But it is not clear how many in the younger cohort will be vaccinated. Inoculations among older children have lagged: Only about 42% of children ages 12 to 15 have been fully vaccinated in the United States, compared with 66% of adults, according to federal data.
Although many remain eager to inoculate their children, opinion polls suggest that some parents have reservations. A survey published last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 26% of parents of children ages 5 to 11 would vaccinate their children “right away” once doses were authorized for their age group.