Attitudes Toward the Global Allocation of Chinese COVID-19 Vaccines: Cross-sectional Online Survey of Adults Living in China

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 vaccines are in short supply worldwide. China was among the first countries to pledge supplies of the COVID-19 vaccine as a global public product, and to date, the country has provided more than 600 million vaccines to more than 200 countries and regions with low COVID-19 vaccination rates. Understanding the public's attitude in China toward the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines could inform global and national decisions, policies, and debates.

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the attitudes of adults living in China regarding the global allocation of COVID-19 vaccines developed in China and how these attitudes vary across provinces and by sociodemographic characteristics.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey among adults registered with the survey company KuRunData. The survey asked participants 31 questions about their attitudes regarding the global allocation of COVID-19 vaccines developed in China. We disaggregated responses by province and sociodemographic characteristics. All analyses used survey sampling weights.

Results: A total of 10,000 participants completed the questionnaire. Participants generally favored providing COVID-19 vaccines to foreign countries before fulfilling domestic needs (75.6%, 95% CI 74.6%-76.5%). Women (3778/4921, 76.8%; odds ratio 1.18, 95% CI 1.07-1.32; P=.002) and those living in rural areas (3123/4065, 76.8%; odds ratio 1.13, 95% CI 1.01-1.27; P=.03) were especially likely to hold this opinion. Most respondents preferred providing financial support through international platforms rather than directly offering support to individual countries (72.1%, 95% CI 71%-73.1%), while for vaccine products they preferred direct provision to relevant countries instead of via a delivery platform such as COVAX (77.3%, 95% CI 76.3%-78.2%).

Conclusions: Among our survey sample, we found that adults are generally supportive of the international distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, which may encourage policy makers to support and implement the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines developed in China worldwide. Conducting similar surveys in other countries could help align policy makers' actions on COVID-19 vaccine distribution with the preferences of their constituencies.

Keywords: COVID-19; COVID-19 vaccines; China; cross-sectional; epidemiology; global allocation; health policy; pandemic; public attitudes; public health; survey; vaccines.