Vaccine Hesitancy: Lessons Learned and Perspectives for a Post-Pandemic Tomorrow

Infectious diseases have always posed a significant threat to mankind, resulting in high mortality and morbidity throughout history [1]. Currently, the burden of communicable diseases still remains very high in all age groups worldwide [2]. Moreover, the current COVID-19 pandemic has once again underlined the tremendous impact of transmittable diseases in terms of public health [1]. From this point of view, vaccines have always represented a fundamental public health tool. Indeed, mass immunization campaigns save millions of lives each year [3]. Furthermore, COVID-19 vaccines are enabling us to overcome the ongoing pandemic. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to promote vaccine uptake and to identify and address barriers for achieving adequate vaccination coverage. Among the obstacles to reaching adequate vaccination coverage, vaccine hesitancy (VH) is rightfully included. VH is defined by SAGE working group as “the delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite the availability of vaccination services”[4] and was included by the World Health Organization (WHO) amongst the major health concerns in 2019 [5]. Going into detail, VH appears to be complex and context specific, varying across time, place and types of vaccines [4]. All these factors have been studied with respect to VH in recent decades and have played a big role during the COVID-19 pandemic and will certainly continue to do so in the post-pandemic future.