ABSTRACT
Background: vaccines are a critical tool in the battle against COVID-19 and is a public health necessity in combating the pandemic, however, getting some particular individual in the society to accept the vaccine can be challenging due to vaccine hesitancy and this comes about because of poor knowledge, poor attitude, and ethical issues safety concerns.
Objective: to assess the knowledge, attitude and acceptability of COVID-19 vaccine among traders at Edaiken market, Uselu, Benin City, Edo State with a view to making recommendations to the appropriate authorities to improve the knowledge, attitude and acceptability of COVID-19 vaccine among the working class population.
Methodology: this is a descriptive cross sectional study conducted among 400 traders using multistage sampling technique in Benin City, Edo State from April 2019 to April 2021. A 41 item questionnaire was utilized to collect data. Data was analyzed with IBM SPSS version 25.0 and quantitative variables were expressed as frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation.
Result: 120 respondents(30%) had good knowledge of COVID-19 and 280(70%) had poor knowledge of COVID-19. 375(93.8%) had poor knowledge of COVID-19 vaccine while 25(6.2%) respondents had good knowledge of COVID-19 vaccine. 83(20.8%) of respondents had a positive attitude towards COVID-19 vaccine. 90(22.5%) of respondents did not know where to get the vaccine. 93(23.3%) respondents were willing to accept the COVD-19 vaccine. 241(60.3%) were not willing to accept the vaccine and 66(16.5%) were undecided.
Conclusion: about one-third of the respondents had good knowledge of COVID-19,less than a tenth of the respondents had a good knowledge COVID-19 vaccine, one-quarter of respondents had a positive attitude towards COVID-19 vaccine and one-quarter of the respondents were willing to accept the vaccine.
