COVID-19 Vaccines Hesitancy as a Public Health Concern: Reasons, Implications and Recommendations with Nigeria in Focus

The discovery of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from Wuhan China and its subsequent global spread changed the world scene, with policies on movement restrictions, disruption in the supply chain of commodities, businesses being shut down, or suffering severe losses. As of February 23, 2022, worldwide, there had been more than 420 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and almost 6 million deaths reported. Vaccination has been an effective means to contain the spread of infectious diseases for decades, especially when therapeutic management is yet to be found. Sadly, there was widely reported resistance to COVID-19 vaccine and this rather became a global threat to its successful use in the global pandemic. This work reviews how extensive the problem has been with reasons and recommendations, using global data and available literature. Data searches online for literature on the extent of the problem of vaccine hesitancy were carried out in Google search, PubMed and Scopus databases as well as on national health and World Health Organization databases. Search terms included ‘vaccine hesitancy’, ‘vaccine resistance’, vaccine statistics’ and ‘overcoming vaccine hesitancy’. Published works were then evaluated and selected for use based on timeliness and relevance to the main theme. Although vaccine resistance is historical and widespread globally, identified causes could be localized and include education, seeming marginalization, lack of confidence in authorities, etc. Application of recommendations such as proper awareness and a multi-lingual approach to the dissemination of information can help stem the tide of resistance, improve overall acceptability and overcome the implications associated with this public health threat.