Over 30 percent of Americans say they won’t get COVID-19 vaccine: poll

Nearly 1 in 3 people in the United States said that they definitely or probably will not get the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a new survey.

The poll, released Wednesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 15 percent of survey respondents said they will “definitely” not get a coronavirus vaccine. Seventeen percent said that they will “probably not” get the inoculation.

Sixty-seven percent of survey respondents said they plan to get vaccinated or have already received an inoculation, including 19 percent who said they “probably will,” 35 percent who said they “definitely will,” and 13 percent who said they have already gotten their shot. 

The poll found that people ages 30-44, Republican voters and people without college degrees were among the most likely to say that they “definitely will not” get a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available to them.

Fifty-seven percent of Black Americans said they have received the vaccine or “definitely or probably” will get vaccinated, according to the poll. Sixty-eight percent of white survey respondents and 65 percent of Hispanic respondents agreed.

Among those who said they do not plan to receive the vaccine, 60 percent cited concerns over possible side effects. Forty-eight percent said that they “plan to wait and see if it is safe” and that they “may get it later.” 

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has forecasted that achieving herd immunity against the coronavirus could require as much as 90 percent of the population to be vaccinated. He has previously estimated that herd immunity could require upwards of 75 percent of the country to be vaccinated.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci told The New York Times in December. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

Over 33 million people in the U.S. have received at least one dost of a COVID-19 vaccine, representing over 10 percent of the country’s total population. 

The poll surveyed 1,055 adults in the U.S. between Jan. 28 – Feb. 1. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.