61% of Pinoys still refusing COVID shots

The majority of Filipinos are not inclined to get vaccinated against COVID-19 even as worries over contracting the virus remained high, according to a Pulse Asia survey.

The results of Pulse Asia’s Ulat sa Bayan were released on Friday as the country’s daily case count reached a new high and topped the 9,000 mark for the first time.

The survey, conducted from Feb. 22 to March 3, found that 61 percent of Filipinos did not want to be inoculated against COVID-19, an increase from the 47 percent recorded in a similar poll conducted in November last year.

Only 16 percent wanted to be vaccinated and the remaining 23 percent were undecided.

Concern about the safety of the vaccines was the reason cited by 84 percent of those who did not want to get vaccinated and 74 percent of those who were undecided about getting a vaccine.

Other reasons why Filipinos do not want to be vaccinated include doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness, belief that it is not needed to combat the virus, and its high cost.

The results also showed 94 percent of Filipino adults were worried that they or any member of their household might contract COVID-19; 3 percent were not worried and 3 percent were undecided.

Conducted among 2,400 adult Filipinos, the survey had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2 percentage points. Subnational estimates in each of the geographic areas covered in the survey (Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao) had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.—INQUIRER RESEARCH