Majority of U.S. Physicians Would Recommend COVID-19 Vaccine, Poll Finds

More than 80% of surveyed physicians would recommend the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine to their patients, according to a recent Doximity poll.

Doximity asked its network of more than 70% of all U.S. physicians, “If approved with an Emergency Use Authorization, will you recommend a coronavirus mRNA vaccine to your patients?” Of the more than 2,000 respondents, 18% were undecided, citing the need to wait for additional data and guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“The importance of our poll is that it is a real-time sampling of physician opinion on a singularly important issue that is evolving very rapidly,” Amit Phull, M.D., medical director at Doximity, told Managed Healthcare Executive®.

When broken down by specialty, the highest “yes” response rates were from those that cared for patients who were at high risk, including nephrology, infectious disease, pulmonology, obstetrics and gynecology, and rheumatology, Phull said.

“It’s possible that these specialties are seeing first-hand within their own patient populations just how important it is to get a vaccine distributed as soon as possible,” he added.

The top five states where physicians responded “yes” were Tennessee, New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Ohio.

The results of the poll came just before the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization to BNT162b2 as the first vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19.

The authorization was granted based on data from an ongoing, real-world, phase 2/3 assessment of the mRNA vaccine against placebo in patients at least 16 years old. The vaccine demonstrated a 95% overall efficacy among treated participants without previous COVID-19 infection prior to seven days after their second dose of the vaccine. Pfizer reported only eight COVID-19 cases among the more than 18,000 eligible participants given the vaccine, compared to 162 among those who took placebo.

This is the first time mRNA technology has been leveraged for a vaccine that would be administered so broadly, Phull said.