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Abstract

Objective: To investigate public uptake of the first and second COVID-19 vaccines doses and their experiences and attitudes towards COVID-19 prevention strategies. Methods: This was a national cross-sectional web-based study conducted in the period from 30/12/2021 to 26/1/2022. A self-administered survey was prepared from a literature search and information about COVID-19 available at various resources. The developed questionnaire was validated for readability by experts and refined in light of the feedbacks received from the experts and the final survey was prepared. The reliability of the questionnaire was 0.7 which shows an acceptable level of scale internal consistency. The data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS software. Results: A total of 513 participants completed the survey, including 311(60.6%) women and 202(39.4%) men. Most participants were below 31 years of age 273(53.2%). The mean age was (31.5�±12.8) years. It was found that, 193(37.9%) were previously diagnosed with COVID-19, 493(96.1%) took the first and second dose of COVID-19, 100 (19.5%) were diagnosed with COVID-19 after taking the first and second dose of the vaccines and 376 (73.3%) suffered from side effects, of these 14% (56/376) reported the side effects to the health authorities. The most common side effect was general body pain (51.5%), fever (42.3%), headache (39.5%), and injection site pain (37.6%). The most commonly used vaccine was Pfizer (73.6%). Participants who are >31 years old had statistically significant positive attitude towards preventive measures compared to those â�¤ 31 years (P=0.009). Conclusion: Vaccine uptake was massive; few cases were infected with COVID-19 after vaccination and Side effects due to COVID-19 vaccine were common. Majority of the participants had positive to moderate attitude towards COVID 19 preventive measures.

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