Assessment of Myths Regarding Coronavirus disease-19 Vaccine among Adults

Abstract

Background: Everyone, everywhere, should have access to COVID-19 vaccines.Vaccines
are a key strategy to stop escalation of the Coronavirus disease-(COVID-19) pandemic.
Vaccine Myths and hesitancy can be due to lack of knowledge, false beliefs, or anti-vaccine
misinformation. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of deception surrounding vaccines and
their development. When deciding whether to get vaccine, it’s important to separate myths
from facts. Objectives:To determine the myths regarding Covid-19 vaccine among adults.
Materials and Methods: A community based cross sectional study was done for three
months among adults of an urban area. Data regarding sociodemographic details and myths
pertaining to Covid-19 vaccine were collected and entered in Microsoft excel and presented
as frequencies and percentages.
Results: 193 adults took part in study.Maximum were aged 32-38years, 80% were literates
and majority of them were males. Residing in nuclear families was common. The most
common myths were related to vaccine having an effect on woman’s fertility (47.67%), side
effects due to vaccine (56.99%) and not requiring vaccine if already infected with Covid-19
(55.95%) and researchers rushed the development of covid-19 vaccine which makes it not
trustworthy (43.52%). Majority of the study participants considered vaccines can be
developed for common cold, HIV and other diseases.
Conclusion: The circumstances in different parts of world varies and while vaccines may be
very effective at reducing number of people getting infected, they cannot assure cent percent
protection, since virus can mutate for new variants. Ending vaccination myths may also takes
some time but at least can be lessened significantly if there is enough effort and collaboration
from everyone.