Nature An analysis of more than one million people in the UK found that two-thirds of people who were vaccine-hesitant during the COVID-19 pandemic went on to get vaccinated. Although some people were initially hesitant to be vaccinated against COVID-19 during the pandemic, many did eventually go on to get at least one dose, according to a study of more than one million people in the United Kingdom1.
Researchers used data from the REACT study, which tracked the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in England and collected data on demographics, health and behaviour during the first two years of the pandemic. The authors linked the information to subsequent vaccine uptake using participants’ National Health Service (NHS) records. They analysed the records of 1.1 million people sampled between January 2021, when questions about vaccination status and attitudes were added to the survey, and March 2022.
Over the course of the study, almost 38,000 people reported some form of vaccine hesitancy, a rate of 3.3%. Rates of hesitancy peaked at 8% in early 2021 and hit a low of 1.1% at the start of 2022, before rebounding to 2.2%. But 65% of those who were initially hesitant went on to get one or more vaccinations later.