69% of Children and Adolescents, 72% of Parents "Will Get COVID-19 Vaccination"

On the 5th, citizens who completed their vaccinations are waiting in the adverse reaction monitoring area at the vaccination center set up at Sadang Sports Complex in Dongjak-gu, Seoul.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] On the 5th, COVID-19 vaccination for children and adolescents aged 12 to 17 began, and a survey found that 69% of these children and adolescents and 72% of their parents wish to receive the vaccine.

The COVID-19 Vaccination Response Promotion Team released the results of the "Survey on Students' and Parents' Perceptions of COVID-19 Vaccination for Children and Adolescents" on the 7th, which included this information.

This survey was conducted as part of a policy research project commissioned by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) titled "Feasibility Analysis and Policy Establishment for Introducing COVID-19 Vaccination for Children and Adolescents." It was carried out through voluntary participation of students from 6th grade elementary to 2nd grade high school and their parents nationwide via the Ministry of Education's NEIS (National Education Information System) student service web system and local education offices. The respondents totaled 614,240, including 341,326 parents and 272,914 students.

According to the survey, 20.2% of students answered that they would "definitely get vaccinated," and 48.9% said they would "probably get vaccinated," totaling 69.1% who wish to be vaccinated. Those refusing vaccination were 13.1% who said they would "probably not get vaccinated" and 4.0% who said they would "never get vaccinated."

Among parents, 72.2% said they would recommend COVID-19 vaccination to their children, while only 15.4% said they would not recommend it.

More than half of both parents and students considered the COVID-19 vaccine to be safe. Specifically, 57.6% of parents and 50.9% of students responded that it was safe. However, only 2.3% of parents and 3.2% of students said it was "very safe," while 55.3% of parents and 47.7% of students said it was "safe." The combined percentage of those who answered "not safe" or "not safe at all" was 26.8% for parents and 24.2% for students.

They also viewed the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine positively. 69.5% of parents and 57.3% of students believed the vaccine was effective, while 9.1% of parents and 10.4% of students responded that it was not effective.

Additionally, both parents and students perceived the likelihood of COVID-19 infection as low but considered the severity of health impact upon infection to be high. Only 6.7% of parents and 5.2% of students responded that the infection risk was high, whereas 67.4% of parents and 69.1% of students said the health impact upon infection was severe.

Meanwhile, as of midnight on the 7th, two days after the start of pre-registration for 16-17-year-old children and adolescents on the 5th, 298,776 out of 898,804 eligible individuals had made reservations, showing a reservation rate of 33.2%. This was an increase of 111,921 reservations compared to midnight the previous day, reflecting a 12.4 percentage point rise in the reservation rate.

Jung Eun-kyung, head of the promotion team and director of the KDCA, stated, "The benefits of vaccination for children and adolescents outweigh the risks, so vaccination is recommended." She added, "However, we ask that individuals and their guardians make autonomous decisions about vaccination after fully understanding the relevant information according to their wishes."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.