Covid vaccine boosters rejected by majority of Americans

Survey finds the most common reason for people not getting a shot is that they do not think they need it

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The majority of Americans intend to skip their next Covid-19 booster vaccine, a survey has found.
Around 60 per cent of the population will reject another Covid-19 shot, according to a Pew Research Centre poll.
The study found a stark divide in uptake between Democrats and Republicans, particularly among adults over the age of 65.
Of those quizzed, around 60 per cent of Democrats said they probably will or have already received the updated vaccine, compared to just 18 per cent of Republicans.
The partisan disparity increased among the elderly, with just 30 per cent of Republicans over the age of 65 saying that they have received or likely would get the new vaccine, compared to 84 per cent of Democrat seniors.
The gulf in vaccine uptake between Democrat and Republican seniors has nearly quadrupled since the first Covid jabs became available in 2021, when there was only a 15-point difference (95 per cent vs 78 per cent).
Mary Koslap-Petraco, a nurse practitioner and chair-elect of Vaccinate Your Family, said the decline in the number of people seeking out booster jabs is the result of “vaccine fatigue”.
“I don’t think people were expecting to have to have Covid vaccines every year like they were for flu vaccines,” she said. “People have almost put the pandemic behind them so they don’t have the same fear as they had before.”
Suspicion of doctors is also a factor, she said.
“There’s been a loss of basic trust in the medical community because of misinformation spread around vaccines, and we really do need to build up again.”
Ms Koslap-Petraco said that although the risk of Covid-19 is “tapering down”, Americans are still dying because of Covid every day. “We can’t let our guard down,” she said.
It comes after Donald Trump tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an outspoken vaccine sceptic, as his health secretary.
In 2021, Mr Kennedy called the Covid-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made”.
The most common reason for people not getting a booster shot was that they did not think they needed it, with 61 per cent listing this as a major reason on the survey. Three fifths of Americans said they were not taking the vaccine because they were worried about side effects.
Common side effects to the vaccine include soreness, fatigue, headache, body aches and fever, while more severe reactions are rare.
The survey, which quizzed nearly 10,000 US adults, also found differences in vaccine hesitancy between racial groups.
The majority of white (62 per cent) and Hispanic (58 per cent) adults said they probably would not get a booster jab, compared to 50 per cent of Asian adults and 49 per cent of black adults.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June recommended everyone over the age of six months get a fresh Covid-19 jab ahead of the coming flu season.
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