JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

On the 30th of January 2020, the WHO’s Emergency Committee declared the rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19, a global health emergency. Since then tireless efforts have been made to mitigate the spread of the disease and its impact, mostly relying on non-pharmaceutical interventions. Only recently, the safety and efficacy of the first COVID-19 vaccines have been demonstrated. Lately, the large social media platform Twitter has been utilized by medical research for the analysis of important public health topics, such as the publics´ perception on antibiotic use and misuse and human papillomavirus vaccination. Analysis of Twitter-generated data can be further facilitated by utilizing the inbuilt, anonymous, polling tool, in order to gain insight into public health issues with rapid feedback on an international scale. During the fast-paced course of the COVID-19 pandemic the Twitter polling system offers a viable method to gain rapid large-scale international public health insights on highly relevant and timely SARS-CoV-2 related topics.

Objective:

The purpose of this study was to understand the public’s perception on the safety and acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccines in real-time through Twitter polls.

Methods:

Two Twitter polls were developed to explore the public’s views on the currently available COVID-19 vaccines. The surveys were pinned to the Digital Health and Patient Safety Platform Twitter timeline for one week in mid-February 2021 and Twitter users and influencers were asked to participate and re-tweet the polls to reach the largest possible audience.

Results:

Adequacy of COVID-19 vaccine safety (of currently available vaccines; Poll 1) was agreed upon by 1,579 out of 3,439 (45.9%) Twitter users, in contrast to almost as many Twitter users (n=1,434/3,439; 41.7%) being unsure about their safety. Only 5.2% (179/3,439) rated the currently available COVID-19 vaccines as generally unsafe. Poll 2, addressing the question whether users would get vaccinated, was answered affirmatively by 82.8% (2,862/3,457) and only 8% (277/3,457) categorically rejected vaccination at the time of polling.

Conclusions:

In contrast to the perceived high level of uncertainty about the safety of currently available COVID-19 vaccines, there is an elevated willingness to get vaccinated among this study sample. Since people's perceptions and views are strongly influenced by the (social) media, snapshots provided from these media represent a static image of a moving target. Thus, the results of this work need to be followed by long-term surveys in an effort to keep validity. This is especially relevant under the circumstances of a fast-paced pandemic course, in order not to miss sudden rises of hesitancy, which may have detrimental effects on the pandemics course.