Since November 2020, we have observed a gradual 20% increase among respondents willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. However, our February 8 poll indicated Americans’ willingness to get inoculated with the vaccine has held steady since January. As mentioned in our February 4 post, this plateau could signal a challenge to achieve the 75-80% inoculation rates required for herd immunity of the population.
What could be driving this reluctance is a lack of confidence in all areas of the government’s ability to distribute the vaccine effectively. Since our January post, we observed a slight increase among respondents who are “somewhat” to “extremely” confident that the federal government will be able to “efficiently distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.” However, during the same period, we found that respondents have become less confident in their state and local health departments’ abilities to distribute a vaccine efficiently – a decrease of 19% and 15% among respondents, respectively.
Last updated on February 18, 2021. Please check back for updates.
Results based on surveys of 254 respondents from February 5, 2021 through February 8, 2021. All surveys were conducted online from respondents in the United States.
For more information about our survey techniques, click here to visit our Methods page.