Belgraders reveal whether they want to get the Covid vaccine: The results are worrying

A poll about vaccination conducted in Belgrade showed that only one fifth of the inhabitants of the Serbian capital want to be vaccinated against coronavirus, and that about 9 percent of citizens will make a decision on that only after the maker of the vaccine is chosen. The results are assessed as worrying, and experts claim that better communication with citizens is necessary.

The study, conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), the Institute of Economics from Belgrade and the Institute of Epidemiology of the Medical Faculty in Belgrade, involved 804 respondents, reports Sputnik.

At the time the survey was done, 41 percent of respondents were not worried that they could become infected, while 13.1 percent thought that "the situation is not as serious as it appears." Slightly less than half of them were undecided about whether they would get vaccinated once the vaccine is approved and available, while a quarter of citizens said they would not get the vaccine.

Experts who conducted the poll assessed that the readiness of citizens for vaccination is at a worrying level and that it is necessary to urgently and comprehensively work on strengthening trust in immunization programs, provide capacities for distribution of vaccines from different manufacturers and plan to increase availability of vaccines to the general population.

The co-founder of the Institute for Digital Communications, psychologist Ana Mirkovic, told Sputnik that so far there has been a lot of "noise" in the communication between the authorities and the citizens, which is why people have become skeptical about vaccination. That is why she stressed that citizens should be receiving clear messages, be provided with answers to numerous questions patiently, which they will hear and understand, and based on which they will make a decision.

"The more transparent, logical, and credible a process is, the easier it is for people to accept it and fit it into their cognitive framework. If something is unclear, there is a lot of 'noise' and if there are no answers to the questions, a relationship of mistrust is created. People are negative about everything that is not clear enough to them. It is necessary to patiently, carefully, clearly, without 'noises', easily, intensively, interactively communicate for a longer period of time so that people understand whether this is something that will protect them from Covid in any way," Ana Mirkovic points out.

Older people agree to get the vaccine, young people continue to talk about conspiracy theories

Tanjug also conducted a poll and found out that mostly older Belgraders are ready for vaccination.

Older citizens say that they will be vaccinated because they belong to a risk group, but note that it is important for them that the vaccine is tested and safe.

When asked if the origin of the vaccine was important to them - whether it's Russian, Chinese, American/German... - they said that it wasn't.

"Yes, I would get the vaccine, regardless of which one. I would accept the one that is standardized, and right now I don't know which one will be. I am simply in the risk group and I think that people need to be vaccinated because of that," said an elderly citizen.

There are also those who said that the Pfizer vaccine "instills them with most confidence" while some citizens, both older and younger, say that they would receive "only the Russian one, if possible" - "because of friendly relations with Russia."

One citizen said that she would get vaccinated, but only if the vaccine was Serbian:

"I don't trust any foreign vaccine, only the one made by Torlak (Institute), when Torlak starts making them. I have some prior knowledge about vaccines, because my aunt was an immunologist and a member of the American Academy of Immunology and I know what kind of things were going on when the bird flu was happening... If Torlak produced it, no problem, because I trust my country and our products, not those."

Only once Torlak makes it

However, young people are very skeptical about the vaccine against coronavirus, although there are those who say they would get vaccinated, but only if the vaccine is "reliably proven to be safe, in a few years."

The comments citizens made in that sense were, "I will not receive anything that has not been tested yet," "Once everything is safe, then maybe I'll get it, but for now I would not," "I would not receive any vaccine, I don't trust institutions," "I would receive a vaccine that is good, but the question is whether they will approve what's good, or maybe they will approve what is in someone's interest."

Some, however, are prone to conspiracy theories, such as a Belgrader who says that "someone is playing with us," that he has reservations about the safety of vaccines, and that he might get vaccinated if these were the 90s, "when everything was more or less checked."

Another citizen said that everything is a conspiracy, including the pandemic itself, and everything, she said, is one big lie.

"I have no intention at all of getting vaccinated...," she says, convinced that someone "wants to kill us with vaccines" because she cannot imagine that a vaccine can be made against a virus nothing is known about.

(Telegraf.rs)