COVID-19 vaccines in Spain: Population’s willingness to get vaccinated and their main concerns and misconceptions

Abstract

Introduction: COVID-19 has not only caused a pandemic of respiratory disease. An infodemic of false information has been reported these late months. These fakes news are particularly relevant when concerning vaccines. In this study, we intend to describe the pro and against COVID-19 vaccination populations and find the main misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccines. Methods: To do so, we surveyed a group of Spanish population on their concerns and opinions on COVID-19 vaccines. Additionally, we asked the respondents about several false beliefs on COVID-19 vaccines.  Results: The results showed that most people reluctant to get vaccinated were more likely to be female, to not have health-related studies, to have a compulsory basic level of education and to not be willing to get the general vaccines suggested by their general practitioner. These people were not found, however, to be more religious, which contradicts what many other studies have demonstrated before. It was also found that most people are worried about the distribution of vaccines and that most people also want vaccines to be compulsory. The results also showed that people less willing to get vaccinated are more likely to be worried about vaccines’ safety, to believe in conspiracy theories involving vaccines and to believe in misconceptions or false beliefs.  Discussion: We believe that our results show that the COVID-19 vaccination campaign faced more hesitancy than most common vaccines, and that we can affirm that the profile of those hesitant to the COVID-19 vaccination was also quite different, being less related to religiosity and much more related to misinformation spread through social media. Conclusions: We believe our study to reveal some key differences in the profiles of those hesitant to COVID-19 vaccination. We believe that this study shows that spreading a survey before any vaccine awareness campaign may provide a lot of information about the main concerns and misconceptions that the target population has, and it might allow for a much better communication strategy.