Abstract:

Background: During the COVID19 pandemic, understanding vaccine hesitancy is becoming increasingly important as governments around the world struggle to convince some of the population to participate in immune protocols. Objectives: To calculate the percentage of COVID‐19 vaccine hesitancy, and to assess the beliefs and the barriers toward COVID-19 vaccines among sample of the Egyptian adults in Cairo. Methods: A Cross sectional study was conducted among adults aged 18 years old or more from both genders. A convenience sample of 289 adult Egyptians were included in the study through sending an anonymous Arabic online self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into three sections: sociodemographic characteristics, beliefs towards COVID-19 vaccinations, and the barriers which prevented vaccinations. Results: The participants' mean age was 36.1 ± 11.36. Among the participants, 59.5% were females and 65.7% were married. The percentage of vaccine hesitancy was 26.3% in the studied sample. Educational level, occupation, and previous infection with COVID‐19 were significantly associated with receiving COVID-19 vaccinations (p value<0.05). The majority of vaccine refusers were concerned about side effects (67.1%), vaccine safety (53.9%), effectiveness and long‐term genetic effects of some vaccine types (51.3%). Moreover, more than half of vaccine refusers (56.6%) would accept getting vaccinated if more research proved the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination. Conclusion: More studies are needed to validate the safety and effectiveness of the existing vaccines and thus vaccine adoption among the general population can be raised.