Few Russians Opposed to Shots are Changing Their Minds, Levada Center Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 8 – A new Levada Center survey suggests that the Russian authorities are having little success in changing the minds of those who have said they do not want to get vaccinated, a pattern that presages serious problems ahead given that more than half of the population is opposed (levada.ru/2021/08/09/vaktsinatsiya/).

            That conclusion flows from the poll’s finding that as more Russians who were prepared to get vaccinated do so, the share of Russians ready to be inoculated has fallen from a quarter of the population to less than a fifth. As a result, in the absence of compulsion, new vaccination rates are likely to fall.  

            Of those who are ready to get their shots, 59 percent said they were in order to reduce the risk to their own health, 48 percent, to cut that risk for those close to them, 15 percent, because they were compelled to at work, and 14 percent to have full access to public places, the Levada Center said.

            Seventy-nine percent of Russians said, the polling agency continued, they did not consult their doctors about this choice. Of those who did, only a slight majority were urged by medical professionals to get the shots compared to those who were dissuaded from doing so by their doctors.

            Twenty-eight percent of those who have been vaccinated say they were not able to choose the vaccine they received; but the survey found that 48 percent favored one of the three Russian vaccines and only four percent identified Pfizer’s serum as their preference. Thirty-one percent said that whatever vaccine was offered, they wouldn’t take it.

            Today, Russian officials reported 22,866 new cases of infection and 787 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours. They also reported that since the start of the pandemic, medical personnel had conducted 169 million tests for the infection as the pandemic continued to spread across the country (t.me/COVID2019_official/3419), regnum.ru/news/3339810.html and  regnum.ru/news/society/3337040.html).

            Given how serious the third wave of the pandemic has become in Russia, the ministry for higher education stood out by announcing today that it is not requiring vaccinations from either Russian students or foreign ones at the higher educational institutions of the country (regnum.ru/news/3339776.html).