More Americans are warming up to COVID-19 vaccines, with 19% saying they have already received 49% on at least one dose and 49% say they want to do so when given the chance, according to new polls.
A total of 69% of American adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center now plan to be vaccinated. It is higher than 60% in November and 52% in September.
Still, 15% of respondents said they would “definitely” not get a COVID-19 vaccine and another 15% said they would probably pass the shots.
Epidemiologists estimate that up to 85% of the country needs to be vaccinated to establish herd immunity to the coronavirus. At that point, the virus will struggle to find new hosts to infect, and the outbreak will come to an end.
Nearly 29 million Americans have had coronavirus infections, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. But experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say even those who have recovered from an infection should be vaccinated because the protection is likely to last longer.
More than half of the respondents – 58% – said that the emergence of new coronavirus variants has increased the urgency for Americans to be vaccinated. Strains from South Africa and Brazil were less sensitive to vaccines in clinical trials, and others – including one that emerged in California – showed signs of vaccine resistance in laboratory tests. Health officials have also called for vaccination as a way to reach more transmissible strains, such as those from the UK.
Black Americans in particular said they were concerned about the possibility that new variants would hamper the country’s ability to stem the outbreak. The survey found that 68% of black adults agreed that the variant “would lead to a major setback for efforts to limit the disease.” A total of 51% of American adults shared the view.
Indeed, the survey revealed that black Americans are more likely to feel personally threatened by the pandemic. 35% said, for example, that they were ‘very worried’ that they would get sick with COVID-19 and eventually needed hospital care; 21% of adults in general said they feel that way. In addition, 42% of black adults said they were “very worried” that they would spread the virus to someone else without even realizing they were infected; A total of 30% of adults had this fear.
There is a basis for this heightened concern. Black Americans would be significantly more likely than Americans as a whole to be someone who died of COVID-19 or was sick enough to need hospitalization, with a margin of 78% to 67%. A report by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics last month found that life expectancy for black Americans fell by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020 (it also fell by 1.9 years for Latinos and 0.8 year for whites.)
This may help explain the sharp increase in the percentage of black Americans who consider COVID-19 vaccines as part of the solution. As of February, 15% of black adults surveyed said they had received at least one dose of vaccine, and another 47% said they would be “definitely” or “likely” vaccinated. This is 62% of the vaccine, which is higher than 42% in November.
Although support for COVID-19 vaccines is still lower among black Americans than other racial or ethnic groups, the gap is now much smaller than it used to be.
In May, the percentage of black adults who said they would be vaccinated was 20 percentage points lower than for white or Latino adults, and 37 percentage points lower than for Asian Americans. By February, the gaps had narrowed to 8 percentage points compared to white adults, 9 percentage points compared to Latinos, and 30 percentage points compared to Asian Americans.
Although Americans’ views on vaccines may converge in racial and ethnic lines, they are moving further apart politically. In February, 83% of Democrats and those leaning toward the party said they had received or intended to receive at least one dose of vaccine. That compares with 56% of Republicans and those leaning toward the IDP – a difference of 27 percentage points. In November, 69% of left-wingers and 50% of right-wingers said they intended to be vaccinated – a gap of 19 percentage points.
The bipartisan gap is also reflected in Americans’ view of the health threat posed by the coronavirus in general: 82% of leftists said the pandemic was a “major threat” to the U.S. population, compared to 41% of those on the right.
Despite this, 66% of Republican and Republican leaders agreed that the vaccine against COVID-19 helps get the U.S. economy back on track. The opinion was shared by 87% of Democrats and Democratic backers. Overall, 51% of American adults said that vaccination would help a lot and 25% said it would help a little.
The findings are based on surveys conducted during the third week of February with 10,121 adults.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.