As Ghana COVID-19 vaccination takes off, survey finds 56% of Ghanaians likely to take it

The Ghana COVID-19 vaccination started this week all over the country and a survey published before the exercise began, has found that six out of every ten Ghanaians say they’re likely to take the vaccine, if readily made available by the government.

This number represents 56 per cent of the population size of 2,345 online social media respondents.

The survey conducted by iRIS Research Consortium, discovered that, adults aged 15 years and above are likely to take the vaccine if it was made generally available by the government of Ghana” a statement copied to ghanabusinessnews.com has said.

This number of the population according to the statement answered “very likely or somewhat likely” to the question “how likely are you to take COVID–19 vaccine if it was made generally available by government of Ghana?”

The statement indicated that 19 per cent of the sample size indicated that “they are somewhat unlikely or very unlikely” to take the vaccine while 25 per cent says they’re undecided.

This survey according to iRIS Research came at the back of the misinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories surrounding the global vaccines towards the fight against the dreadful virus.

“The success of COVID-19 vaccination programmes worldwide relies heavily on public willingness to accept the vaccine” according to the statement.

The World Health Organization (WHO) refers to the delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability as “hesitancy”.

This has become an issue after Ghana took delivery of 600,000 of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the COVAX programme with support from UNICEF and other donor agencies.

69 per cent of those who agree to take the vaccine based their reasons on the fact that “it will help me protect my family and other people in the community. Those who indicated their unwillingness to take the vaccine were 61 per cent of the percentage of 25 based their reasons on the assumption that the vaccine is not clinically safe.

President Akufo-Addo was the first person to take the vaccine jab to erase negative doubts about the vaccine and to encourage the public to take it.

The survey lasted for five days through social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Snowballing and Chain-referrals approach through networks was used to reach the population.

By Fred Duhoe