COVID-19 vaccine intentions in Australia.

Many countries have approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech's mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine for children aged 12–17 years, and there are safety and efficacy trials underway in children younger than 12 years. Published research examining parents’ hesitancy to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 has been based on data from samples selected using non-probability-based selection methods, which are not likely to be representative.

We report data from the August 2021 Australian National University (ANU) COVID-19 impact monitoring survey, a nationally representative, predominantly online survey examining parental vaccine hesitancy. The survey was done 1 month before the Australian Government advised that children aged 15–17 years were allowed to be vaccinated. Of the 3125 adults surveyed, 763 were living in households with at least one child younger than 18 years. For each child, parents were asked: “If a safe and effective vaccine to prevent COVID-19 were available to , would you make the decision for them to…?”. Responses for 1368 children were provided, with 581 (42·5%) indicating that they would definitely, 497 (36·3%) would probably, 156 (11·4%) would probably not, and 134 (9·8%) would definitely not get their child vaccinated. Parents with children aged 15–18 years had the highest percentage responding that they would probably or definitely get their child vaccinated (87·1%; 264 of 303), followed by parents of children aged 5–9 years (77·2%; 280 of 363), 10–14 years (76·5%; 316 of 413), and 0–4 years (71·6%; 207 of 289).

We found several demographic characteristics associated with vaccine hesitancy (answers probably or definitely not) among parents in a probit regression model (appendix). Parents of older children, parents who were aged 18–24 years or older than 45 years compared with parents aged 35–44 years, and those with greater household income were more likely to want their child vaccinated. Parents were less likely to want their child vaccinated if they were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, spoke a language other than English at home, had a vocational qualification, or lived outside of Sydney.

A second model added parents’ vaccination status or, if not vaccinated, vaccine intentions (appendix). Parents’ vaccine resistance (definitely not get vaccinated) or hesitancy (probably not) were the strongest correlates of not wanting their child to be vaccinated. Importantly, parents who indicated that they probably will get vaccinated but have not got vaccinated yet had significantly lower vaccine intentions for their children than parents who were vaccinated. Our findings suggest that over 70% of Australian parents are likely to want to get their child vaccinated and confirm that parents’ own vaccine hesitancy is the strongest correlate of their intentions for their children.

The ANU Poll is funded by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. NB reports funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health to analyse the socioeconomic and demographic factors associated with vaccine uptake in Australia. All other authors declare no competing interests.