Survey: 51% of parents said they would vaccinate young children against COVID-19
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A survey conducted last fall found that around half of parents of children aged 0 to 4 years said they were likely to vaccinate their children against COVID-19, researchers reported.
COVID-19 vaccines are now authorized and recommended for children as young as age 6 months in the United States.
COVID-19 vaccine uptake for children younger than 11 years in the U.S. has been slow, and prior research has shown that nearly 25% of U.S. parents were vaccine hesitant before the pandemic.
“While others have characterized factors contributing to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among U.S. adults, less is known regarding parental opinions about COVID-19 vaccination for children,” they wrote.
In October and November of 2021, researchers sent out more than 5,000 surveys to parents of children aged 0 to 4, 5 to 11 and 12 to 17 years, asking the first group how likely they were to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19 should a vaccine be available and asking the latter two if their children were vaccinated, and if not, how likely they were to receive a vaccine.
From 3,230 completed surveys, the researchers found that for children aged 0 to 4, 51.5% of parents said they were likely to have their children vaccinated, with 25.2% saying they would seek vaccination for their children “as soon as authorization occurred.”
Regarding parents of children aged between 5 and 11 years, 54% were reported as likely to vaccinate, and 22% also reported they would seek vaccination upon its authorization. Additionally, approximately 69.7% of parents with children aged 12 to 17 were reported as likely to vaccinate their children.
Factors associated with willingness to have children receive a COVID-19 vaccine were belief in benefits of COVID-19 vaccination, acceptance of routine childhood vaccines, parental COVID-19 vaccination and presence of children of another age group in the household, among others.
The researchers reinforced in their conclusion that “belief in the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination and acceptance of routine childhood vaccines are the strongest predictors of intention to vaccinate children.”
“Further research is needed to track how parental attitudes change as more data about pediatric COVID-19 vaccines become available and how intentions translate into pediatric vaccine uptake,” they wrote.
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