Attitudes and Acceptance of the Palestinian Population towards COVID-19 Health Precautions and Vaccinations: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 is a new pandemic and the best protection against this infection is by vaccination.

Aims: This study aims to assess the commitment to COVID-19 health precautions and willingness to receive vaccination among the Palestinian population.

Methods: An online-based survey was carried out for an observational cross-sectional study. A total of 1367 participants were recruited conveniently between February and June 2021. To carry out comparisons, Mann-Whitney or Kruskal-Wallis was used for numerical variables and chisquare or Fisher's exact for categorical. Multiple logistic regression was used to evaluate health precautions and multinomial logistic regression was used to observe willingness for vaccination.

Results: The commitment to the majority of health precautions was predicted by perceiving COVID-19 threat, educational level, and city residency (P < 0.05). Social distancing and sterilizer usage were associated with city residency (P < 0.001). Students, males, and unemployed participants were less committed to health precautions (P < 0.05). Vaccination willingness was less predicted by the perception of an ineffective vaccine (P < 0.001), perceiving no threat of COVID- 19 (P < 0.05) or perception of threat for old/or chronic diseases (P < 0.05), employed participants (P < 0.05), without chronic diseases (P < 0.05), and not committed to wearing a mask (P < 0.001).

Conclusion: COVID-19 threat perception, high education level, and city residency predict more commitment to health precautions, in contrast to male students and unemployed participants. On the other hand, having no chronic diseases, perception of ineffective vaccines, unperceived COVID-19 threat, and unwillingness to wear masks predicted less vaccination acceptance. Therefore, it is critical to increase awareness about the COVID-19 threat, health precautions, and vaccination efficacy. This study is cross-sectional. Future works concerning changes in Attitudes toward COVID- 19 health precautions and vaccination should be encouraged, including vaccinated participants.