• Burak Civelek, Ozan Yazici, Nuriye Ozdemir, Cengiz Karacin, and Aziz Ahmet Surel.
• Alife Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
• Int. J. Clin. Pract. 2021 May 26: e14399.

AimThe development of safe and effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and successful implementation of a global vaccination programme are prerequisites for a return to normal living conditions. Despite these intensive research efforts, vaccine hesitancy and misinformation in many countries present substantial obstacles to achieving sufficient coverage and community immunity. Here, we report the findings of a survey regarding the likelihood of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in a sample of physicians in Turkey.Materials And MethodsAn anonymous web-based survey was prepared and sent to medical doctors randomly selected from seven parts of Turkey via a text message sent to their mobile phones. Demographic data were collected, including sex (male or female), medical specialty, age, professional experience, COVID-19 history, knowledge of COVID-19 vaccines and behaviours related to vaccines against COVID-19 and other diseases. The survey was conducted over a 1-week period in December 2020.ResultsA total of 1,557 medical doctors responded to the survey. A total of 1,065 (68.4%) respondents were considering COVID-19 vaccination, 374 (24%) were undecided and 118 (7.6%) did not want to be vaccinated. As a result of multivariate analysis, the male gender, absence of history of COVID-19 infection, and having sufficient information about the vaccine were determined as predictive factors for willingness to vaccination.ConclusionAlthough trials tend to focus on the efficacy of vaccines, the results of this study indicated that the most important factor affecting the preference for a given vaccine among Turkish physicians is safety.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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