US Parents’ Opinions on Vaccines Change, Poll Finds



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About one in four American parents report that one of their children has had to be quarantined at home due to possible exposure to Covid-19 since the start of the school year, according to the latest findings of an investigation monthly on vaccine attitudes of the Kaiser Family. Foundation.

It is even then that two-thirds of parents say they believe their school is taking appropriate action to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The report suggests that many parents are in conflict over what to do to keep their children both healthy and educated.

Even among parents who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, 18% don’t think schools should require all staff and students to wear masks, a view shared by 63% of unvaccinated parents. Overall, 58% of parents say schools should have full mask requirements, 35% say there should be no mask mandate at all, and 4% think only students and the Unvaccinated staff should be required to wear masks, according to the report.

Over the summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all elementary and secondary school students, teachers, and staff wear masks, regardless of their immunization status, to allow as many people as possible. students can resume teaching in person.

Kaiser conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,519 people from September 13 to 22 – a time of sharp rise in Covid deaths – and was mostly completed before Pfizer and BioNTech only announced their vaccine against coronavirus was safe and effective for children aged 5 to 11. No The vaccine is currently licensed in the United States for children under 12 years of age. Of all respondents, 414 identified themselves as parents of children 17 years of age or younger and were included in the analysis of parental responses.

The Pfizer vaccine, already in use for older children and adults, was cleared in mid-May for children aged 12 to 15, and the report suggests that over time, parents of children from this age group and older are slowly becoming more comfortable with it. . At the time of the September interviews, 48% said their children aged 12 to 17 had received at least one dose, up from 41% in July. According to federal data, 57 percent of this age group received at least one dose.

And perhaps prompted by a constellation of factors, including the growing number of children hospitalized because of the Delta variant as well as older vaccinated children staying healthy, parents of children ages 5 to 11. more and more are saying they prefer the vaccine as well.

Thirty-four percent of those parents now say they will get their children immunized as soon as they can, up from 26 percent in July. As a result, parental reluctance begins to melt away: in September, when the school was open, 32% of the parents of these young children said they preferred to “wait and see” before making the decision to vaccinate them, against 40% in July.

It should be noted that the share of parents of children aged 5 to 17 who insist that they “certainly will not” get their children vaccinated has hardly changed in months, suggesting that they will be the best. more difficult to convince. In April, 22% of parents in the older cohort, aged 12 to 17, said they definitely would not get their children vaccinated; in September, 21 percent said they had the same view. Parents of younger children are equally adamant: in July, 25% said “definitely not” position, and in September, 24% did.

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