COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Healthcare Workers Amidst the Second Wave of the Pandemic in India: A Single Centre Study

Introduction Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine hesitancy amongst healthcare workers (HCW) has been reported in varying degrees in different parts of the world. In this study, we investigate the degree of vaccine hesitancy amongst HCWs and factors associated with it during the second wave of the pandemic in our centre. Methods We undertook this single-centre, cross-sectional study in an urban tertiary care hospital, using a modified Oxford COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy scale. We performed descriptive and appropriate univariate analysis. We used the Kruskal Wallis test as appropriate, and Spearman rank correlation to evaluate the relation between general attitude to vaccination and COVID vaccine hesitancy score. Results We obtained 223 responses. The majority of HCWs in our sample (n = 201; 90.1%) had received at least one dose of the vaccine. The mean (SD) Oxford vaccine hesitancy score was 28.54 ± 2.05, with no significant difference observed between doctors (28.45 ± 2.26) and nurses (28.68 ± 1.70), or across different specialities. Of the respondents, 92.7% (n = 216) responded positively to taking the vaccine. The lack of dependents at home was the only significant contributor to vaccine hesitancy. Age, gender, marital status, and COVID-19 infection status did not significantly affect vaccine hesitancy. Conclusion We found a significantly lower degree of hesitancy towards COVID-19 amongst HCWs in our centre during the pandemic's second wave. A more comprehensive and multi-centric study is required to validate this finding.