Majority of Americans will wait to get Covid vaccine, poll shows

A growing number of Americans will be reluctant to get a Covid-19 vaccine immediately after one is developed.

The US has recorded nearly 7m cases and on Tuesday the death toll surpassed 200,000. But six in 10 respondents in a new Axios/Ipsos poll said they would not take a vaccine as soon as it is available, up from 53% from August, and a majority said they would wait at least a few months to get a vaccine or did not plan to get one at all.

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Regarding when respondents planned on getting a vaccine once it was available, the most popular timeframe was a few months after release, at 30%. Just 13% said they would get it immediately; 16% said they would wait a few weeks; 18% said they would wait at least a year; and 23% said they would not get a vaccine at all.

Public health experts, including some involved in White House coronavirus response efforts, have indicated it is very unlikely a vaccine will be proven safe and effective before the presidential election in November.

But Donald Trump has made bold claims that a vaccine could be approved by October, a move critics say is meant to bolster his re-election chances.

After Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the Senate last week a vaccine will probably not be available to the public until mid-2021, Trump said Redfield was “confused” and had made a mistake.

The Axios/Ipsos poll demonstrates that even if a vaccine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as quickly as Trump has promised, immediate relief will probably not be seen. Not only will it take many months to produce the millions of doses needed to vaccinate the majority of the population, but as the poll indicates, there will be reluctance from many to get the vaccine immediately.

Such reluctance is shared by Democrats and Republicans, though fewer Republicans told pollsters they would be willing to get the first version of the vaccine. Among Democrats, 43% said they would be very or somewhat likely to get the vaccine as soon as it was available. Among Republicans, 33% were prepared to state that position. Both groups saw a decline in willingness from late August.

Cliff Young, president of Ipsos US, told Axios the responses probably resulted from public health experts urging patience and from the politicization of vaccine efforts.

“These cues, whether red or blue, immediately elicit negative emotion from the other side,” he said, using shorthand for Republican views (red) and Democratic (blue). This created a “negative sort of sheen” over the vaccine, he said.