Knowledge and attitude toward the second round of COVID-19 vaccines among teachers working at southern public universities in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

About 1.9 million people in Ethiopia have received a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, which are given to frontline health care workers and university instructors through a campaign. After healthcare workers, teachers at all levels in Ethiopia are assumed to be at a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19. An institution-based cross-sectional study design was used. Simple random sampling was used to select participants. Data were collected using a structured, self-administered questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis was conducted for all variables, and a p-value < 0.05 at 95% CI was considered statistically significant. Overall, 60.8% and 79.7% of participants had good knowledge of and positive attitudes toward a second round of COVID-19 vaccines, respectively. Age (AOR = 1.51 [95% CI = 1.003–3.63]), profession (AOR = 1.402 [95% CI = 1.107–3.003]), work experience (AOR = 1.509 [95% CI = 1.151–2.283]), and chronic diseases (AOR = 2.142 [95% CI = 1.337–3.092]) were predictor variables for knowledge about the second round of COVID-19 vaccines. Sex (AOR = 1.386 [95% CI = 1.018–2.763]), marital status (AOR = 4.180 [95% CI = 2.397–6.989]), profession (AOR = 1.102 [95% CI = 1.008–3.123]), work experience (AOR = 1.211 [95% CI = 1.029–2.877]), and chronic diseases (AOR = 6.110 [95% CI = 4.892–10.661]) were predictor variables for attitudes toward a second round of COVID-19 vaccines. Generally, knowledge and attitudes toward the second round of COVID-19 vaccines among instructors were low. Thus, health education and communication are very crucial.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 vaccine
• knowledge
• attitude
• teachers
• second dose

Ethical approval and consent to the participant

Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Wolaita Sodo University. A permission letter was obtained from the respective universities. The consent form was attached with the questionnaire the participants were requested to read the form before filling the questionnaire. Participants were informed as they can skip question/s that they do not want to answer partially or fully and to stop at any time if they want to do so. Confidentiality of the individual information was assured by not recording the identifying information.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank my colleges for giving suggestions. I am very grateful to the Wolaita Sodo University College of Health Science and Medicine for giving me the ethical clearance. We are also indebted to thank the respective universities and study participants for their cooperation during data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the present study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

ARDS Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

AOR Adjusted Odds Ratio

CI Confidence Interval

COVID-19 Corona Virus Disease –19

ETB Ethiopian Birr

RNA Ribo Nucleic Acid

SD Standard Deviation.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.