Even as United States President Donald Trump is in celebrating mood over the discovery of vaccine for corona virus a study in the country revealed that a large number of health-care workers themselves are not prepared to take it.
According to a survey done by Florida’s Jackson Health System only 49.4 per cent of health workers said that they would take the vaccine.
Besides, 35.7 per cent of them said that they would not be taking it in the first round. The rest, 14.9 per cent respondents, said they were not interested in the vaccine at all.
The Jackson Health System is one of the five hospitals in Florida receiving the first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine. The hospital surveyed its 5,900 employees for this study.
The head of the National Institute of Health, the United States, Dr. Francis S. Collins, said that it is a matter of major concern. He appealed to the people, especially those engaged in health sector, to take the vaccine.
This scepticism continued even when the pandemic is spreading fast to new regions of the country.
The news is worrisome for the authorities struggling to repose confidence among the common masses, many of whom still have little trust in the vaccine.
The survey report has come when the death toll due to COVID-19 in the United States has crossed 3.01 lakh mark. The daily death toll has exceeded the figure of 3,000—that is more than those who died in the 9/11 attack on Twin Towers in New York and Pentagon in Washington.
The outgoing president, Donald Trump, was last week quick to announce that the corona virus vaccine would be distributed free of cost to the people. However, he reversed his decision to vaccinate top government officials especially in the White House because public distribution is limited to health-care workers and people hospitalized for long-term care facilities. Trump himself tweeted that he and his staff would be taking the vaccine later on. Ironically, it is the same Trump who throughout February and March 2020 was busy ridiculing China and was calling the disease Wuhan corona virus.
He and many of his Republican supporters were seeing a conspiracy in the spread of the pandemic and during the Presidential debates with Democratic Party rival Joe Biden he refused to wear mask, though later he too was tested corona positive.
