NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Vaccine hesitancy is trending downward.
In the face of a surge in the more contagious Delta variant, the share of Americans who are disinclined to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot is just half of what it was this winter, a newly released ABC News/Washington Post poll shows.
Thirty-two percent of Americans surveyed back in January said they “definitely or probably” would not get vaccinated, compared to just 17% of those surveyed in the last days of August and first day of September.
The stronger embrace of vaccines come as the Pfizer shot received full FDA approval and as fears of catching the virus rose. Americans who felt they had a “high/moderate” risk of catching the virus jumped from 29% in January to 47 percent this summer, according to the poll.
As of Sept. 2, more than 174.9 million Americans had been fully vaccinated — about 53% of the country's population, CDC data show.
But the survey also shows that as more people get their vaccines, the remaining holdouts are more staunchly opposed to the shots.
Seven out of 10 unvaccinated adults are skeptical of the vaccines' safety and effectiveness. And just 16% say they'd get vaccinated if required by their employer and a full 72% of unvaccinated workers not facing a workplace mandate say they'd quit if faced with one.
President Joe Biden’s approval rating related to his handling of the pandemic also took a significant hit between winter and this summer, dropping steeply from 62% in June to 52% now.
The poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, was conducted by phone between Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,006 adults.
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