Confidence in coronavirus vaccines has grown with majority now saying they want it

Recent polling among Americans indicates an increased willingness to get the coronavirus vaccine amid growing confidence in the inoculations and the distribution of a third vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

This week, President Biden unveiled a partnership between Merck and Johnson & Johnson to produce the latter’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, adding that the U.S. will have enough vaccine doses through this and the two-shot inoculations from Pfizer and Moderna to vaccinate every American adult by the end of May. 

In studies conducted in recent weeks, Americans have shown an increased willingness to get the vaccine despite initial hesitation at the start of the vaccine rollout. 

In a Pew Research Center poll published Friday, 69 percent of U.S. adults surveyed between Feb. 16 and Feb. 21 said they had either already received the vaccine or intended to get the vaccine, an increase from 60 percent who said they planned to get vaccinated in November. 

Pew reported that about 19 percent of survey respondents have already gotten the vaccine, while an additional 50 percent said they “definitely or probably” planned on getting vaccinated. 

In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released late last month, 55 percent of U.S. adults said they have either received at least one dose of the vaccine (18 percent), or wanted to get the inoculation as soon as possible (37 percent). 

Recent Axios/Ipsos polling also showed similar results, with 57 percent saying they would receive the vaccine or have already gotten it, up from just 13 percent of adults who in September said they would be willing to get the vaccine once it was available to them. 

Despite the increased willingness to get vaccinated among Americans overall, minority groups and people in lower income levels have continued to say they are less willing to receive one of the FDA-approved vaccines. 

Black and Hispanic adults continue to be more likely than White adults to say they will “wait and see” before deciding whether to get the coronavirus vaccine, Kaiser found, though Pew on Friday found that a majority of Black Americans — 61 percent — now say they plan on getting vaccinated or already did, up from 42 percent who said the same in November. 

Pew found that 14 percent of lower-income adults say they have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, compared with 20 percent of middle-income adults and 27 percent of those in upper-income brackets.

These findings come as public health experts have said that somewhere between 70 percent and 90 percent of the American population would need to get vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity, in which enough people will be resistant to the virus causing COVID-19 that it will be all-but eliminated. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 57.4 million Americans have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of Saturday, with 29.8 million already with two doses.