Examining Drivers of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Ghana: The Roles of Political Allegiance, Misinformation Beliefs, and Sociodemographic Factors

The vast majority of people in the world who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 reside in LMIC countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This includes Ghana, where only 15.9% of the country are fully vaccinated as of April 2022. A key factor negatively impacting vaccination campaigns is vaccine hesitancy, defined as the delay in the acceptance, or blunt refusal, of vaccines. Four online cross-sectional surveys of Ghanaian citizens were conducted in August 2020 (N = 3048), March 2021 (N = 1558), June 2021 (N = 1295), and February 2022 (N = 424) to observe temporal trends of vaccine hesitancy in Ghana, and to examine key groups associated with hesitancy. Overall hesitancy decreased from 36.8% (95% CI: 35.1%-38.5%) in August 2020 to 17.2% (95% CI: 15.3%-19.1%) in March 2021. However, hesitancy increased to 23.8% (95% CI: 21.5%-26.1%) in June 2021, and then again to 52.2% (95% CI: 47.4%-57.0%) in February 2022. Key reasons included not having enough vaccine-related information (50.6%) and concerns over vaccine safety (32.0%). Hesitant groups included Christians, urban dwellers, opposition political party voters, people with more years of education, females, people who received COVID-19 information from internet sources, and people who expressed uncertainty about COVID-19 misinformation beliefs.