Highlights Refusal rate of nurses to influenza vaccine reduced during the pandemic. A low acceptance level and high hesitancy level to COVID vaccination was observed. A strong association between COVID-19 and influenza vaccine acceptance was found. Major concern of nurses about the COVID-19 vaccine was its efficacy and safety.

Vaccine hesitancy is among the major threats to the effectiveness of vaccination programmes. This study aimed to report the trend in response to willingness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine between two waves of the local epidemic and examine differences among occupations. Two cross-sectional surveys were conducted online during the first wave (February) and third wave (August to September) of the local epidemic in 2020. Acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine was measured along with personal protection behaviours and occupations. A total of 2047 participants provided valid responses. The willingness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine among the participants was lower in the third wave (34.8%) than the first wave (44.2%). There were more concerns over vaccine safety in the third wave. Clerical/service/sales workers were less likely to accept the vaccine (adjusted odds ratio: 0.62, 95% confidence interval: 0.43–0.91). A high-level compliance of facemask wearing was found, and more people maintained social distancing and used alcohol hand rub in the third wave. Decreasing willingness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine may be associated with increasing concerns about vaccine safety and growing compliance of personal protection behaviours. The rush of vaccine development with higher risks of safety issues may jeopardize the public’s trust and lower uptake rates. Education and favourable policy should be provided to the general working population for the vaccination, especially for those who are not professional and are frequently exposed to crowds.

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The emergence and reemergence of coronavirus epidemics sparked renewed concerns from global epidemiology researchers and public health administrators. Mathematical models that represented how contact tracing and follow-up may control Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) transmissions were developed for evaluating different infection control interventions, estimating likely number of infections as well as facilitating understanding of their likely epidemiology. We reviewed mathematical models for contact tracing and follow-up control measures of SARS and MERS transmission. Model characteristics, epidemiological parameters and intervention parameters used in the mathematical models from seven studies were summarized. A major concern identified in future epidemics is whether public health administrators can collect all the required data for building epidemiological models in a short period of time during the early phase of an outbreak. Also, currently available models do not explicitly model constrained resources. We urge for closed-loop communication between public health administrators and modelling researchers to come up with guidelines to delineate the collection of the required data in the midst of an outbreak and the inclusion of additional logistical details in future similar models.