When one shot is not enough: ensuring New Yorkers complete the COVID-19 vaccine series
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Contributor(s):
- New York State Health Foundation, issuing body.
- Publication:
- New York, NY : New York State Health Foundation, December 2020
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- COVID-19 Vaccines Immunization Programs New York United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Three vaccines have either received or are on the verge of approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use to prevent COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. According to clinical testing, each of the vaccines requires more than one dose in order to be most effective. All of the doses are expected to be administered by intramuscular injections, or shots. The vaccine developed by Pfizer will require a second shot of its vaccine three weeks after the first one, while the Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines require a second shot a month later. Multi-dose vaccines come with logistical challenges, such as requiring twice as many vials and syringes, as well as more storage capacity. They will also require people to make at least two visits to their health care provider for the shots, which creates risk that not everyone will return for the second dose. The recommended number of doses and timing have been determined by what was proven to be most effective during clinical trials. Hence, timely and complete vaccination with multiple-dose schedules is of public health importance, as an incomplete series may yield suboptimal disease protection. Developing vaccines in less than a year is a historic achievement. However, there are other challenges to overcome in the effort to vaccinate hundreds of millions of Americans. Beyond the logistics, more than one-quarter of Americans in a recent survey expressed strong hesitation when asked if they would take a COVID-19 vaccine. Public health officials will need to figure out how to overcome a multitude of factors leading to that hesitation, including a loss of faith in public health authorities, concerns about the speed and politicization of the development process, unknowns about longer-term effects, distrust of the health care system among some patients of color, and rampant misinformation about vaccines. Given this level of hesitancy, it is all the more important to make sure that people who initiate a vaccine series actually complete it. Below, we take a closer look at completion rates for other multi-dose vaccines, so that we can better understand the likelihood that people will follow through on the second COVID-19 vaccine shot. We also look at prior research from fields such as psychology and behavioral economics (see Text Box) to provide insights on what can be done to ensure people—and New Yorkers specifically—complete their COVID-19 vaccine series.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (11 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918402186306676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918402186306676