COVID-19 vaccination: patient uptake and attitudes in a multi-ethnic North London maternity unit

Abstract

PurposeCOVID-19 vaccine uptake among pregnant women has been low, particularly in younger and ethnic minority mothers. We performed a ‘snapshot’ survey to explore vaccine uptake and factors which influence this, as well as underlying beliefs regarding COVID-19 vaccination among pregnant women in a North London hospital.Study designPregnant women were invited to complete an anonymised survey, where data were collected on demographics, personal and household vaccination status, and beliefs about the vaccine. Free-text comments were analysed thematically.ResultsTwo hundred and two women completed the survey, of whom 56.9% (n=115) were unvaccinated and 43.1% (n=87) had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, with 35.6% (n=72) having received two doses. Factors associated with acceptance of vaccination included: (a) age over 25 years (57.6% vaccinated vs 17.2% under 25 years); (b) Asian ethnicity (69.4% vaccinated vs 41.2% white ethnicity, 27.5% black/Caribbean/African/black-British ethnicity and 12.5% mixed ethnicity) and (c) living in a vaccinated household (63.7% vaccinated vs 9.7% living in an unvaccinated household) (all p<0.001). Vaccine uptake was higher in women who had relied on formal medical advice as their main source of information compared with other sources (59.0% vs 37.5% friends and family, 30.4% news and 21.4% social media). Qualitative data revealed concerns about a lack of information regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy.ConclusionAge, ethnicity, household vaccination status and information source influenced vaccination status in our pregnant population. These findings highlight the urgent need to tackle vaccine mistrust and disseminate pregnancy-specific vaccine safety data to pregnant women.Trial registration number5467.

Protecting against Respiratory Syncytial Virus: An online questionnaire study exploring UK parents’ acceptability of vaccination in pregnancy or monoclonal antibody administration for infants

“…Participants who self-identified as being from a Black, Black British, Caribbean or African background had significantly lower levels of acceptability of both the maternal vaccine and infant monoclonal antibody, consistent with other studies on ethnographic factors influencing attitudes towards vaccines, albeit the number of respondents identifying as such was low (19, 20). This highlights the importance of addressing specific cultural considerations in preparing resources to help improve uptake of immunisation.…”

COVID-19 Vaccine Knowledge, Attitude, Acceptance and Hesitancy among Pregnancy and Breastfeeding: Systematic Review of Hospital-Based Studies

“…All the studies were performed in gynecological or maternal units at public or private hospitals. Recruitment was performed by inviting consecutive women attending the clinic in approximately half of the cases (n = 25/43) [2,20,[24][25][26]29,30,33,35,[37][38][39][40]42,44,46,47,49,[51][52][53][54]56,60,61], random sampling was employed in four studies (n = 4), antenatal care registry was used in three studies (n = 3) [21,36,59], convenience sampling was adopted in other three studies (n = 3) [27,28,32], multistage sampling approach was used in two studies (n = 2) [55,58], the snow-ball method was used in one study (n = 1) [22], and one study used data from an ongoing prospective longitudinal cohort study (n = 1) [50]. Four studies did not specify the recruitment method adopted [23,31,45,48].…”

“…In approximately half of the studies, questionnaires were administered face-to-face (n = 21/43) [2,21,26,30,34,35,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]56,58,61], however, two of them combined the faceto-face interview with the on-line administration [44,61]. Seven studies used on-line administration [24,[27][28][29]33,54,60], five studies performed a self-administration (paperbased) [22,32,37,49,51] and two studies used a telephone administration [36,50]. Eight studies did not report information regarding administration methods [20,23,25,31,52,53,55,59].…”

“…Regarding source of funds, approximately one third of the included studies (n = 19/43) did not receive funds [21,23,[27][28][29][30][31]34,[36][37][38][39][42][43][44][45]53,56,57]. Eight studies declared source of funds [32,33,[49][50][51]54,55,61], whereas, the remaining did not report the information.…”

“Figuring stuff out myself” – a qualitative study on maternal vaccination in socially and ethnically diverse areas in England

“…Similarly, Covid-19 vaccine uptake has been lower in London, in socio-economically deprived areas and among some minority ethnic groups [ 15 , 18 ]. For example, a survey at an antenatal/maternity outpatient clinic in London in October/November 2021 showed that 88% of pregnant women from mixed/multiple ethnicity, 73% of black, 59% of white/other white and 31% of Asian ethnicity had been unvaccinated against Covid-19 [ 19 ].…”