To Take a Coronavirus Vaccine or Reject It? an Examination of Factors Influencing Vaccine Hesitancy Amongst Newcomers in Mexico, USA and Canada

Vaccine hesitancy is not new. Governments and public health officials have been educating the public about the safety of vaccines for decades. But the vaccine for coronavirus posed a different challenge. The “speed” at which the mRNA vaccine for coronavirus was developed did not make it easier to convince an already skeptical public of its safety and efficacy. For many officials, convincing the newcomer populations to take the vaccine was assumed to be a major challenge because of an assumption that many newcomers would lack the education and confidence in government officials needed to assure them of the safety of the vaccination. To examine the public’s willingness or reluctance to receive a coronavirus vaccine, our team surveyed residents of Mexico, USA and Canada weekly from March 20 2020 through July 2021. Follow up surveys were conducted every three months for a two-year period after. As a result, we have a large longitudinal database that allows us to examine various beliefs, behaviours and intentions of Mexicans, Americans and Canadians during the pandemic. In today’s presentation, we examine the vaccine uptake and myth beliefs of citizens and immigrants in the three countries to answer the question: to what extent does immigrant status influence vaccine uptake and belief in myths in Mexico, USA and Canada? Our results indicate that newcomers in Canada and Mexico are the most likely to accept the vaccine and less likely to believe in vaccine myths and that residents of the USA are the least likely to take the vaccine and most likely to believe in myths. We identify other factors that influence myth belief and vaccine rejection including gender, age, geography, political leaning, religiosity. Using intersectional risk theory, we find that marginalized communities may not blanketly reject science, medical theory or vaccines as has been previously suggested.