NEW YORK (Reuters) – An increasing number of Americans want to get the coronavirus vaccine, and most also support restrictions in the workplace, lifestyle and travel for those not vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a survey Reuters / Ipsos released on Friday.
The national poll of 1,005 people, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, suggested that the pace of vaccinations may increase as more vaccines become available and more people want them.
In all, 54% of respondents said they were “very interested” in getting vaccinated. That was above a January survey, when 41% expressed the same level of interest, and 38% in a May 2020 survey, before a coronavirus vaccine was developed.
Interest in the vaccine has increased in the last year among whites and racial minorities, with about 6 out of 10 whites and 5 out of 10 members of minority groups now expressing a high level of interest.
Twenty-seven percent of Americans said they were not interested in being vaccinated, which has not changed from a similar survey conducted in May.
But, foreshadowing the social challenges that may arise as the United States begins to emerge from the year-old pandemic, the latest research has shown that most Americans want to limit the ways in which unvaccinated people can mix in public.
Seventy-two percent of Americans said it was important to know “whether people around me were vaccinated,” according to the survey.
The majority – 62% – said that unvaccinated people should not be allowed to travel by plane. Fifty-five percent agreed that unvaccinated people should not exercise at public gyms, enter cinemas or attend public shows.
When asked about the workplace, 60% of Americans said they wanted to work for an employer “who requires everyone to get a coronavirus vaccine before returning to the office” and 56% think unvaccinated workers should stay home.
‘Different status’
Soon, companies may experience increasing pressure to address these concerns. About 18% of the US population has already received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine and President Joe Biden said in a televised speech Thursday night that he would order states to make all adults eligible for the vaccine by 1 of May. In Utah, Gov A Cox will open vaccine eligibility for all adults on April 1.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, said the survey responses made sense, given the social restrictions imposed on everyone in the past year.
“People are saying, ‘If I get vaccinated, it will change my life,'” said Adalja. “‘And if you are not vaccinated, the choice is yours. But you will be in a different situation because you may be a carrier of this virus, so you can spread it to another unvaccinated person.'”
The results of the research were somewhat divided between the party lines. Republicans, who were generally less concerned about coronavirus than others in the past year, also gave less support than Democrats to workplace and lifestyle restrictions for the unvaccinated, according to the survey.
Still, even among Republicans, four out of ten said they supported banning people without vaccines from going to gyms or cinemas. Five out of ten Republicans think vaccines should be required for air travel.
The Reuters / Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, across the United States. It had a credibility interval, a precision measure, of 4 percentage points.
(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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