Abstract
Aim: Coronavirus infection has caused disease at the pandemic level with several deaths worldwide and affected all aspects of human life. One way to minimize virus transmission and its effects is to perform mass vaccination within the general population so that herd immunity is developed against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, low health literacy and vaccine hesitancy are potential threats in achieving this. The present study is designed to measure the Knowledge, Attitude, and Perception levels towards COVID-19 and assess public perception and acceptance levels of the vaccine among the general population in the Hail province of Saudi Arabia.
Methods: A bilingual, community-based questionnaire, consisting of the respondents' socio-demographic profile, COVID-19 knowledge, and attitude & perception towards COVID-19 vaccination, was circulated using different social media platforms. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS software.
Results: Appropriate knowledge level was found in 74.8% of the respondents, whereas inappropriate knowledge levels were observed in females and participants with non-health-related occupations and were inversely related to willingness to the vaccine. More than 60% of the respondents had a negative attitude towards the COVID-19 vaccine, as only 51% were willing to get vaccinated. A negative attitude was significantly associated with female respondents.
Conclusion: Our study reports a high knowledge level among the respondents in the Hail province. However, there is also a decreased willingness to be vaccinated, suggesting that more vaccine and health literacy seminars should be conducted to generate awareness among the general population in the Hail province, KSA.