Determinants of Public Acceptance of the COVID-19 Vaccine: A Systematic Review

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic can be considered as a global unity that has forced all countries to work together to treat it. Consistent with ongoing efforts to reduce the prevalence of COVID-19, building a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, which is recognized as a major achievement, is a priority for many developed countries around the world. In this regard, we aimed to investigate the determinants of public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccine.
Methods: In this review, published articles on the determinants of public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccine during 2020-2021 were reviewed. To obtain related scientific documents, the following keywords were searched in the title and abstract of published articles: Coronavirus 2019, COVID-19, and Vaccine acceptance, Resistance, Doubt, Vaccination, Determinants and Pandemics. Scientific databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus and ProQuest were searched and all relevant English articles were listed. The PRISMA checklist was used to review and control the quality of articles.
Results: Initially, 372 English articles were retrieved and finally 19 articles were finally selected for comprehensive review and data extraction. The results showed that most people were more receptive to vaccines that produce 90%-95% efficacy and safety levels. Also, being a woman, low age, low-income level, being single, low education and lack of trust in the government were among the factors that reduced the acceptance of people for the COVID-19 vaccine. The most common reasons for people not participating in the vaccination process were fear of vaccine side effects, lack of confidence in vaccine efficacy, and safety levels.
Conclusion: Considering that a significant number of people in the world have a high acceptance of vaccines with 90%-95% safety levels. Measures need to be taken to speed up the vaccination process. Also, since most people are only afraid and anxious about the side effects caused by vaccines, it is necessary to increase people’s awareness and knowledge about the positive and negative consequences of vaccination.