The Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the COVID‐19 vaccine on December 11, 2020 has been met with hesitancy for uptake with some citing potential impacts on future fertility. We hypothesised that irrespective of sex, fertility‐related queries would markedly increase during the 48 days following EUA of the coronavirus vaccine. We sought to objectively identify trends in internet search queries on public concerns regarding COVID‐19 vaccine side effects on fertility that might impact vaccine uptake. We used Google Trends to investigate queries in Google's Search Engine relating to the coronavirus vaccine and fertility between 10/24/2020 and 1/27/2021. The five most queried terms were identified as: ‘COVID Vaccine Fertility’, ‘COVID Vaccine and Infertility’, ‘COVID Vaccine Infertility’, ‘COVID Vaccine Fertility CDC’, and ‘COVID 19 Vaccine Infertility’ with an increase of 710.47%, 207.56%, 264.35%, 2,943.7%, and 529.26%, respectively, all p < .001. This study indicates that there was an increase in online COVID‐19 vaccine‐related queries regarding fertility side effects coinciding with the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) on December 11, 2020. Our results objectively evidence the increased concern regarding the vaccine and likely demonstrate a major cause for hesitancy in vaccine uptake. Future studies and counselling with patients should be undertaken to help mitigate these concerns.

As of June 2021, three vaccines have been issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to combat SARS-CoV-2, with approximately 65% of U.S. adults over the age of 18 having received at least one vaccine dose (Hamel, Lopes, Kearney, et al., 2021). However, vaccine hesitancy rates have remained steady, with 10.2% of Americans stating they probably will not get a vaccine and 8.2% stating they would definitely not get a vaccine (Tram et al., 2021). With the emergence of the delta variant and COVID-19 cases on the rise nationwide, it is more important than ever to vaccinate the population. Thus, we evaluated the current reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among the unvaccinated U.S. population.

No abstract