• Matthew B Roberts, Catherine Ferguson, Erin McCartney, Kendra Selvanderan, Arash Badiei, Lisa Paradiso, Caitlin Wallace, Helena Torpy, Frank Zhang, Beatrice Sim, Lito Papanicolas, Anushia Ashokan, David Shaw, and Narin Bak.
• Infectious Diseases Unit, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
• Intern Med J. 2022 Oct 1; 52 (10): 169116971691-1697.

BackgroundCOVID-19 vaccination represents a key preventative part of the Australian public health approach to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. Hospital inpatients are frequently high risk for severe COVID-19 and death. Anecdotes of high-risk inpatients being unvaccinated and a lack of electronic medical record (EMR) visibility of COVID-19 vaccination status prompted the present study as these patients could represent a risk to themselves, staff, other patients and service provision.AimsTo determine the uptake of COVID-19 vaccine among inpatients at an adult Australian tertiary public hospital and identify reasons for non-vaccination.MethodsA point-prevalence study of patient-reported COVID-19 vaccine status was conducted on 26 October 2021 through an in-person interview with collection of demographic factors and reasons for non-vaccination.ResultsOf 368 (68% of inpatients) participants, 280 (76%) reported receiving at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. Vaccination status was associated with older age, having received the flu vaccine, being born in Australia and not requiring an English-language interpreter. The majority (88%) of participants had at least one comorbid risk factor for severe COVID-19. Of the unvaccinated (n = 88), 67% were willing to be vaccinated with 54% of those indicating vaccination in hospital would be helpful and 42% requesting approval from their doctor.ConclusionsVaccine uptake in our cohort is suboptimal. Existing public health programmes have failed to reach this high-risk, vulnerable population. Changes to the national vaccination strategy to include a parallel inhospital programme for all hospital encounters and target culturally and linguistically diverse individuals might improve uptake among this high-risk, hard-to-reach group of patients.© 2022 Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

33 keywords...

hide…