Page 74 - IJPS-10-1

International Journal of

Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE
What drives the willingness to get vaccinated

against COVID-19 in South Africa?

Yemi Adewoyin * and Clifford O. Odimegwu 1
1,2
1 Demography and Population Studies Programme, Schools of Public Health and Social Sciences,
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
2 Department of Geography, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria
(This article belongs to Special Issue: Population and Reproductive Health Dynamics under
Covid-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa)

Abstract

The willingness to get vaccinated in South Africa is among the highest in the world,
measuring at 76%. This study investigated the impact of individual risk beliefs,
self-reported health status, and familiarity with someone with coronavirus disease
2019 (COVID-19) on the willingness to get vaccinated in South Africa. Data were
obtained from the Wave 5 of the South African National Income Dynamics Study –
Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and
binary logistic regression. More than 53% of the population believed that they were
not at risk of COVID-19; 71.8% believed that they were in good health; and 31.6%
knew someone with COVID-19. Beliefs (odds ratio [OR]: 1.287), health status (OR:
1.064), and COVID-19 case familiarity (OR: 1.034) were associated with willingness
to get vaccinated. Other associations remained positive in the adjusted model. The
*Corresponding author:
Yemi Adewoyin relationship between case familiarity and willingness to get vaccinated shows that
(yemiadewoyin@yahoo.com) knowing someone who died of COVID-19 or suffered from the discomfort induced
Citation: Adewoyin, Y. & by the disease may drive other individuals to get vaccinated.
Odimegwu, C.O. (2024). What
drives the willingness to get
vaccinated against COVID-19 in Keywords: COVID-19; Risk beliefs; Health status; Case familiarity; Vaccine willingness;
South Africa? International Journal South Africa
of Population Studies, 10(1):68-76.
https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.479
Received: March 15, 2023
Accepted: December 1, 2023 1. Introduction
Published Online: December 26, More than 2 years after its emergence as a public health issue, the coronavirus disease
2023 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic still gripped the world. As of February 4, 2022, more than
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). 386.5 million cases and 5.7 million deaths have been recorded in over 200 countries
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms of the (World Health Organization [WHO], 2022a). Initial efforts to contain its spread were
Creative Commons Attribution targeted mainly at the restriction of movement and social interactions as well as the
License, permitting distribution, use of facemasks. To complement these efforts and in the absence of WHO-approved
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is antiviral drugs for the treatment of the disease, research laboratories and pharmaceutical
properly cited. companies developed vaccines against COVID-19. Vaccines stimulate the body’s natural
Publisher’s Note: AccScience defenses to fight against infections (WHO, 2022b; Center for Disease Control, 2022).
Publishing remains neutral with With the WHO approval for some of these vaccines, over 10 billion vaccine doses had
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional been administered globally as of February 1, 2022 (WHO, 2022c). These ranged from
affiliations. not <100 doses per 100 population in North America and Europe to between 0.52

Volume 10 Issue 1 (2024) 68 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.479