COVID-19 Vaccination Compliance and Associated Factors among Medical Students during an Early Phase of Vaccination Rollout—A Survey from Israel

COVID-19 is “a once-in-a-century” pandemic, bringing with it unparalleled health, social, and economic ramifications. As part of the world’s efforts to restrain the pandemic, vaccine development has been expedited. This population-representative survey in Israel aimed to investigate whether the knowledge, attitudes, and vaccination status of medical students affect their intention to recommend COVID-19 vaccination (as well as reasons for refusal and acceptance of the vaccine). The questionnaire was anonymous, via Google Forms app in December 2021. One-hundred and four medical students completed the survey. Overwhelmingly, (91.3%) COVID-19 vaccination status and intention to receive the vaccine were positively associated with intention to recommend. Twenty-five percent of the students replied that they lacked knowledge regarding the vaccine. A statistically significant association was found between experiencing quarantine and the intention to be vaccinated (p = 0.034). There was a significant positive relationship between the number of symptoms from previous vaccines and the fear of COVID-19 (rs = 0.272, p < 0.01). Prior vaccination did not have an effect on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. This first study evaluating COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Israeli medical students highlighted the need for medical programs to emphasize the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination in the protection of healthcare workers and patient safety. Education, awareness campaigns, and regulation of vaccine trials could further decrease COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and increase vaccine rates among medical students.

Global impact of vaccine nationalism during COVID-19 pandemic

Vaccines are the best chance to control the pandemic—unless leaders succumb to vaccine nationalism. Vaccine nationalism is a frequent recurrence, especially during a brand-new market distribution. The development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in such a short space of time is a testament to modern scientific abilities. It will also test the world's political will and moral commitment to end this pandemic. As desperate as the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine nationalism is already setting a foundation for itself and is considered socially and economically counterproductive. Vaccine equity is not just a theoretical slogan, and it protects people worldwide from new vaccine-resistant variants. Understanding and anticipating the consequences is vital, and creating a global solution approach to avoid them. This article evaluates the common issues previously faced and the plausible ones during this pandemic. A few recommendations are made to warn and accentuate the reality of this dire matter.

Global Innovation Trends for Plant-Based Vaccines Production: A Patent Analysis

The use of plants as biofactories for the production of medical products and vaccines has a long history, but the recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused this set of technologies, for their potential to contribute to the development of innovative solutions for tackling pandemic spread worldwide, to rise in prominence. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the global innovation scenario of plant-based vaccine production. Methods: Patent search using a specific set of technical classification codes and keywords was performed using the Questel-Orbit database, with a final output of 180 patent families, corresponding to 1397 single patents. Results: Plant-based vaccines production is an innovation sector with positive development especially in the last five-year period (30% growth). Fifty percent of the patents were registered in the United States, standing out as the most attractive patent system worldwide. The inventive activity was led by private firms owning the 49% of the patent families, and the key-players group includes the companies that successfully developed plant-based COVID-19 vaccine candidates, indicating a strong connection between the expertise in innovation production and the capacity to adapt inventions to the current pandemic vaccine demand. Virus-like particles technology has increased in importance over the past few years. Conclusion: Patent data confirm their relevant role as indicators of innovation and technological evolution. Plant-based vaccines are expected to acquire an increasing role over the next few years as the current pandemic acts as an innovation catalyst.

Quantifying changes in vaccine coverage in mainstream media as a result of COVID-19 outbreak

Background: Achieving vaccine-derived herd immunity depends on public acceptance of vaccination, which in turn relies on people's understanding of its risks and benefits. The fundamental objective of public health messaging on vaccines is therefore the clear and concise communication of often complex information, and increasingly the countering of misinformation. The primary outlet shaping societal understanding is the mainstream online news media. There was widespread media coverage of the multiple vaccines that were rapidly developed in response to COVID-19. We studied vaccine coverage on the front pages of mainstream online news, using text-mining analysis to quantify the amount of information and sentiment polarization of vaccine coverage delivered to readers. Methods: We analyzed 28 million articles from 172 major news sources, across 11 countries between July 2015 and April 2021. We employed keyword-based frequency analysis to estimate the proportion of coverage given to vaccines in our dataset. We performed topic detection using BERTopic and Named Entity Recognition to identify the leading subjects and actors mentioned in the context of vaccines. We used the Vader Python module to perform sentiment polarization quantification of all our English-language articles. Results: We find that the proportion of headlines mentioning vaccines on the front pages of international major news sites increased from 0.1% to 3.8% with the outbreak of COVID-19. The absolute number of negatively polarized articles increased from a total of 6,698 before the COVID-19 outbreak 2015-2019 compared to 28,552 in 2020-2021. Overall, however, before the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine coverage was slightly negatively polarized (57% negative) whereas with the outbreak, the coverage was primarily positively polarized (38% negative). Conclusions: Because of COVID-19, vaccines have risen from a marginal topic to a widely discussed topic on the front pages of major news outlets. Despite a perceived rise in hesitancy, the mainstream online media, i.e. the primary information source to most individuals, has been strongly positive compared to pre-pandemic vaccine news, which was mainly negative. However, the pandemic was accompanied with an order of magnitude increase in vaccine news volume that due to pre-pandemic low frequency sampling bias may contribute to a perceived negative sentiment. These results highlight the important interactions between the volume of news and overall polarisation. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first systematic text mining study of vaccines in the context of COVID-19.

Trends of industry-leading biotechnology stocks during COVID-19

The 2019-nCoV coronavirus has significantly impacted the macroeconomic outlook for countries across the world. The biotechnology sector experienced a relatively positive stock price outlook, which corroborates the trends exhibited by biotechnology stocks in previous pandemics such as SARS (2003) and AH1N1 (2009). During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine roll-out rates have been more efficient than in any other pandemic, as companies today are more experienced in combating the time constraint to create vaccines. Gilead Sciences Inc. saw its shares rise 18% after developing the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, 'remdesivir'. In contrast, AstraZeneca's shares fell 2.28% in 2021 after its vaccine underwent investigations into blood-clotting side effects and subsequent suspension from several countries. Companies developing mRNA vaccines like Moderna, BioNTech, and Pfizer witnessed surges in share prices ranging from 10% to 20%. Many newer biotech companies such as Genexie, Sanovi, OnoSec, and Vaxart have also developed vaccines for COVID-19. Share prices are more volatile for these less established companies. This paper observes how developing new technologies, staging clinical trials, obtaining FDA approvals, gaining publicity, and several other complex factors have profound impacts on the stock prices of these biotechnology companies.

Case Report: Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia in a Pancreatic Cancer Patient After Vaccination With Messenger RNA−1273

Vaccination plays an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) is a major adverse effect that could be lethal. For cancer patients, cancer-related thromboembolism is another lethal complication. When cancer patients receive their COVID-19 vaccines, the following thromboembolic events will be more complicated. We presented a case recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, who had received the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccination 12 days prior. Ischemic stroke and VITT were also diagnosed. We aggressively treated the patient with steroids, immunoglobulin, and plasma exchange. The titer of anti-platelet factor four and d-dimer level decreased, but the patient ultimately died. The complicated condition of VITT superimposed cancer-related thromboembolism was considered. To our knowledge, only one case of mRNA-1273 related VITT was reported, and this case study was the first to report a cancer patient who was diagnosed with VITT after mRNA-1273 vaccination. Therefore, when the need for vaccination among cancer patients increased under the current COVID-19 pandemic, the possible risk of VITT for cancer patients should be carefully managed. Further studies of the risk evaluation of the COVID-19 vaccine in cancer patients might be required in the future.

The COVID States Project #68: Heightened parental concerns about COVID-19 vaccinations for children

In early October 2021, Pfizer and BioNTech asked the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to authorize their COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of 5 and 11. The success of vaccinating children is, however, still contingent upon whether parents feel their children should get the COVID-19 vaccine.Before the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy among parents was prevalent in certain pockets of the US. Parental vaccine hesitancy led to decreased inoculation rates among children for immunizations such as the MMR vaccine. This subsequently led to outbreaks of previously-eradicated diseases - like the measles - among children in states such as Washington and New York in 2018, and Minnesota in 2017.With the COVID-19 vaccine, parental vaccine hesitancy could similarly lead to higher levels of COVID-19 cases among minors, while also transmitting the disease to other populations. Investigating parental vaccine concerns is important in understanding and addressing parental vaccine hesitancy surrounding COVID-19. For this reason, in June 2021 we asked parents across the country about various concerns regarding childhood COVID-19 vaccination. We isolated their top five concerns: how new the vaccine is, whether the vaccine has been tested enough, whether the vaccine actually works, immediate side effects of the vaccine, and long-term side effects of the vaccine. We asked parents about these concerns again in September 2021 to detect shifts over time.Across the board, we find that the proportion of parents who felt these five items were major concerns increased substantially. We also find that several groups tend to express more concern over vaccinating their children against COVID-19, including younger mothers, parents of younger children, parents of children who have not yet been vaccinated, Republicans and Independents, Hispanic and Black parents, the non-college educated, and rural residents.We also asked parents about the likelihood of vaccinating their kids against COVID-19. We found significant proportions of parental vaccine hesitancy. For instance, 34% of parents with kids under 12 said it was unlikely that they would vaccinate their children against COVID-19. Further, the likelihood of parents vaccinating their children against COVID-19 was highly related to parental vaccination status and mode of student instruction.Parents having concerns about vaccinating their children does not automatically result in vaccine hesitancy, and it is also possible that the vaccine hesitant adopt heightened concerns because they are vaccine hesitant. That said, the concerns and motivations driving COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among parents should be examined more closely.

COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptability and Hesitancy in Africa: Implications for Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy

Background: Increased acceptance and uptake of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines is very essential in containing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy is a threat to public health containment of infectious diseases. Aim: The main aim of this study was to review published articles regarding COVID-19 vaccine acceptability and hesitancy across all populations in Africa. Materials and methods: This was a narrative review. A comprehensive literature search was done using PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and EMBASE using the keywords vaccine acceptability, vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19 vaccine, COVID-19 pandemic, H1N1 vaccine, swine flu, swine flu vaccine, Africa, and the Boolean word AND. The cited literature was published between March 2001 and June 2021. Results: The few studies were done in Africa so far are among healthcare workers and medical students. Acceptance of vaccination against COVID-19 in Africa ranged from 15.4% to 55.9%. This shows increased hesitancy to receive the COVID-19 vaccines in African countries. Many people were concerned about the potential adverse effects and ineffectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines has contributed to the hesitancy reported from different studies. Moreover, sociodemographic characteristics were also predictors of the acceptability of COVID-19 vaccines. Conclusion: Low acceptability rates reported in Africa indicates increased hesitancy to vaccination against COVID-19. The low acceptance of vaccines in Africa can hinder the required 60-70% vaccinations to achieve herd immunity. Therefore, there is a need to develop strategies that will address hesitancy against the COVID-19 vaccines across countries and populations in Africa and the entire globe.