PANDEMIA EN ECUADOR: ACEPTACIÓN DE LA POBLACIÓN ANTE LA APLICACIÓN DE LA VACUNA CONTRA LA COVID-19

Abstract

Introduction: the fast spread of COVID-19 has become a pandemic, promoting the creation and implementation of different preventive methods to face this situation, including the development of vaccines. In Ecuador until February 2021 the cases exceeded over 271 000, and more than 15 475 deaths, with a daily increase, in Ecuador the vaccination of Pfizer/ BioNTech has begun. Objective: to evaluate the acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine from the Ecuadorian population Method: it is an observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study. The population under study was Ecuadorians aged 20 to 64 years, with a sample of 841 people, obtained by non-probabilistic snowball sampling. Results: The 42% of the sample were men and 58% women. The median age is between 38 and 46 years. The most representative ethnicity was mestizo with a 90%, 31% claimed to have a college degree. The 45% of the surveyed believe that vaccine will cause adverse effects. The 52% agree that they would get the vaccine as soon as it arrives. Europe is the continent which people have more trust in vaccine production. Finally, 95% of Ecuadorians will keep biosecurity measures after receiving the vaccines. Conclusions: a huge part of the population considers that the vaccine would be effective, but almost half of the sample do not know and deny to be vaccinated, assuming that the vaccine would cause adverse health effects.