Greece's First Responders Doubt Covid-19 Vaccine and Won't Take it

A large percentage of health workers in Greece have responded negatively to the upcoming Covid-19 vaccination, with anti-vaccination doctors and nursing staff in some hospitals being the majority.
According to a recent poll by Pulse among health professionals, 29 percent of respondents are against the vaccination, while 15 percent say that they will never take the vaccine.
As Greece is counting down the arrival of the coronavirus vaccine health workers are the first to be vaccinated, according to the government plan but of the medical staff in 12 public hospitals that responded to an ANT1 report, a large percentage of them do not want to be vaccinated.
Indicatively, in the Livadia Hospital, 36.42 percent of medical staff say that they will get the coronavirus vaccine, while 61.81 percent gave a negative response. In Karditsa, the percentages are 41.59 for the vaccine and 58.41 percent against.
The lowest percentage of health professionals who said they were positive about being vaccinated appears in the hospital of Larissa with only 22.93 percent saying that they agree to be vaccinated. It should be noted that Larissa is one of the cities with the most cases of Covid-19 detected proportionately.
According to POEDIN, the union of Athens public hospital staff, the number of health professionals to get the vaccine until Saturday has been quite small, with only 20 percent of health professionals in Athens having expressed the willingness to be vaccinated.
A worry of health professionals is the way the government is handling the issue of vaccination.
Overall, doctors believe that the vaccination process is moving at a very fast pace, while they consider the pressure the government is putting on them unacceptable. The unspoken threat of disciplinary action against doctors who openly refuse to be vaccinated has generated a lot of reaction on part of the health workers community.
POEDIN argues in favor of proper information for medical staff by the infection committees and presents the arguments in favor of the vaccination.
Speaking to Iatronet website, Matina Pagoni, president of the Attica Hospital Doctors Association (EINAP) that Attica doctors will be vaccinated and that she has not noticed any reaction: “I will be vaccinated first, to give an example”, she said.
According to Dr. Vassilios Kotsis of the Papageorgiou Hospital in Thessaloniki, “Young doctors think that the vaccine does not concern them now and say that they will be vaccinated at a later time. They believe that since they are young they will not get seriously ill. But the issue is social contribution: If they get sick, vulnerable people around them will be in danger.”