Sustained COVID-19 vaccine willingness after safety concerns over the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine

INTRODUCTION Prompted by reports of thromboembolic events - some with fatal outcomes - among people who had received the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine from Oxford-AstraZeneca against COVID-19, a number of European countries paused vaccination with this vaccine in early and mid-March 2021. Prior studies have suggested that vaccine willingness is highly dependent on public trust in the safety of vaccines. We therefore investigated whether vaccine willingness dropped in the wake of the reported cases of thromboembolic events in relation to the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. METHODS Using longitudinal survey data from Denmark, we compared vaccine willingness shortly before and after the reported cases of thromboembolic events, as well as the perceived safety of the two most widely used COVID-19 vaccines in Denmark - those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca - in the wake of these events. RESULTS We found sustained vaccine willingness after the reported cases of thromboembolic events (89% both before and after). However, the safety of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was perceived to be significantly and substantially lower than the safety of the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, and this difference was particularly pronounced among those who were vaccine-hesitant. CONCLUSIONS The vaccine willingness of Danes does not seem to have been affected by the reports of thromboembolic events in relation to the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. FUNDING The study was funded by a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (grant number: NNF20SA0062874). TRIAL REGISTRATION not relevant.