COVID-19 Vaccine - Attitudes and Experiences

Between December 2020 and March 2021, three Tri-borough webinars were hosted by the three Healthwatch teams to hear people’s views about the vaccine and their experiences of receiving the Covid-19 vaccination. In addition to these webinars, a number of telephone interviews were also conducted between February and March 2021.

In both the webinars and the telephone interviews, the following questions were asked:

• Would you take the COVID-19 vaccine?
• If you do not want to take it, what are your reasons behind this?
• What would prevent you from taking the vaccine?
• How was your experience receiving the COVID-19 vaccination?

A total of 160 responses to these questions were collected. This report sets out to summarise the data and the feedback from each webinar as well as provide a summary of the COVID-19 vaccination reviews from the telephone interviews. The report will conclude with a short analysis of the data gathered and a summary of how the public’s attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines have changed over the course of the four-month period.

Due to the government restrictions on face-to-face interaction, the main source of data was from attendees of the three webinars. Although the number in attendance was consistent, this is arguably less than the number that would have attended face-to-face engagement events.

As a result of the small sample size, this report is not representative of all communities and age groups, particularly those that are more likely to be digitally excluded. The Healthwatch Teams also had an online questionnaire and some Telephone interviews were conducted 

The findings are discussed in more detail in the main body of the report, which is complete with key learnings, recommendations, and some next steps for each webinar.