Acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination and its determinants among Lebanese dentists: a cross-sectional study

(2021) 21:484 Nasr et al. BMC Oral Health https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-021-01831-6 Open Access RESEARCH Acceptance of COVID‑19 vaccination and its determinants among Lebanese dentists: a cross‑sectional study Lara Nasr1*, Nadine Saleh1, Mira Hleyhel1, Abbass El‑Outa2 and Ziad Noujeim3 Abstract Background: Dentists are at high risk of exposure to occupational Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Since vaccination is crucial to control COVID-19 pandemic, we aimed to assess COVID-19 vaccination acceptance and its determinants among Lebanese practicing dentists. Methods: A cross-sectional online study was conducted between February 15 and 22, 2021, among dentists practic‑ ing in Lebanon. Prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance was estimated. A multivariable modified Poisson regres‑ sion model was used to explore determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Results: In total, 86% of participants were willing to receive or have already received a COVID-19 vaccine. Having received the influenza vaccine during the COVID-19 pandemic was linked to a 12% increase in the COVID-19 vaccina‑ tion acceptance rate. In addition, participants having moderate and high COVID-19 vaccination knowledge levels were more likely to accept receiving the vaccine, and participants whose fear of COVID-19 level was high were more likely to accept receiving the vaccine compared to those having a low fear level. Contrarily, those who visit the medi‑ cal doctor only when needed and once a year were less likely to accept COVID-19 vaccine compared to participants who routinely visit the medical doctor. Conclusions: Our study showed a high level of acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination among Lebanese practicing dentists. And since knowledge about COVID-19 vaccination was associated with the vaccine acceptance, it should be improved and updated to further increase the acceptance rate. High acceptability of COVID-19 vaccination among dentists is expected to have a positive impact among the population in terms of increasing awareness and vaccine uptake. Keywords: COVID-19 vaccines, SARS-CoV-2, Vaccination, Dentists Background An outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China, was first reported in December 2019, and has raised intense concerns at an international level [1]. A novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), had been identified and isolated from *Correspondence: 1 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Public Health, Lebanese University, Fanar, Lebanon Full list of author information is available at the end of the article patients in Wuhan by January 7, 2020, and has rapidly spread from Wuhan to the rest of the world [1]. On January 30, 2020, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has been declared as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” by the World Health Organization (WHO) [2]. On March 11, 2020, COVID19 outbreak has been announced by the WHO as a global pandemic [2]. And up to March 25, 2021, there have been more than 123,000,000 confirmed cases with more than 2,710,000 deaths reported to the WHO worldwide. So far, © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Nasr et al. BMC Oral Health (2021) 21:484 no treatment for COVID-19 has been curative and universally approved, and in this regard, prevention remains the only crucial mean to fight against this virus which is constantly mutating into new variants, and among preventive measures, vaccination prevails [3]. At the time of this study, several COVID-19 vaccines have already been developed using different technologies, yet only mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech) with high efficacy (94–95%) and Janssen vaccine of Johnson and Johnson (one dose viral vector vaccine) have been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use [3–5]. COVID-19 vaccines produced by conventional methods (viral vectors, subunit particles, attenuated and inactivated viruses) have comparatively shown satisfactory but lower levels of efficacy ranging from 70 to 92% [3]. Currently, many countries have already started vaccination campaigns and Lebanon received its first batch of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines on February 14, 2021; the vaccination campaign immediately started with elderly citizens and healthcare professionals (HCPs) including Lebanese dentists registered in the Lebanese Dental Association (LDA). Oral healthcare professionals are at high risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 which spreads via respiratory droplets and aerosols resulting from oral surgical and dental procedures; cross-infection is the other (indirect) mode of transmission of this virus in the dental surgery [6–9]. Several measures and guidelines were adapted to clinical dental practice since the beginning of the outbreak to prevent transmissions among patients through crossinfection and transmission to and from the dentist himself/herself [7–9]. Nevertheless, the definitive solution to reduce the discussed risk, prevent further spread of the virus, and avoid complications associated with this disease, is to reach herd immunity, optimally through vaccination. Therefore, dental practitioners and their assistants are in utmost need to get vaccinated [10]. In reality, vaccines’ effectiveness depends on the race to vaccinate the world’s population before new resistant variants emerge, and this mainly relies on the acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination [3]. When a new vaccine is introduced, hesitancy usually arises against its safety and effectiveness. Since they are responsible to promote best health practices, HCPs’ influence on the public is crucial in spreading vaccination awareness [11–13]. Therefore, it is important to evaluate their COVID-19 vaccination acceptance and knowledge. Several researchers have evaluated such parameters among healthcare workers in few countries and showed an acceptance rate ranging from 27.7 to 85% among them [14–19], but, to our k (...truncated)