Half of vaccinated Americans say they want a variant-specific COVID-19 shot

Linley SandersData Journalist
September 02, 2022, 7:40 PM GMT+0

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration authorized new coronavirus booster shots that are tailored to protect people from the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of COVID-19. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's sign-off, the new shots are expected to be rolled out as early as next week for vaccinated adults.

In the Economist/YouGov poll conducted in the days before these recent announcements, 52% of fully vaccinated American adults said they want to get the variant-specific booster shot when it is available to them. About one in five fully vaccinated people (22%) say they don't want to get it, and 26% are not sure.

As has been found on other questions about vaccinations throughout the pandemic, Republicans are less accepting of the shot. That's true even among people who've already been vaccinated. Seven in 10 vaccinated Democrats (70%) but only 33% of vaccinated Republicans say they are planning to receive the new booster shot.

— Taylor Orth, Oana Dumitru, and Carl Bialik contributed to this article

This poll was conducted on August 28 - 30, 2022 among 1,500 U.S. adult citizens. Explore more on the methodology and data for this Economist/YouGov poll.

Image: Adobe Stock (by wavebreak3)