COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among Temporary Foreign Workers from Bangladesh

The COVID-19 pandemic poses an extraordinary threat to the health, safety, and freedom of temporary foreign workers (TFWs). Highly effective vaccines against COVID-19 may hold an outsized benefit for TFWs, particularly those living in congregate settings where protective measures such as social dist...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health systems and reform 2021-01, Vol.7 (1)
Main Authors: West, Heidi, Lawton, Alexander, Hossain, Shamim, Mustafa, A. H. M. Golam, Razzaque, Abdur, Kuhn, Randall
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
COVID-19
immigrant health
migrants
temporary foreign workers
vaccine hesitancy
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic poses an extraordinary threat to the health, safety, and freedom of temporary foreign workers (TFWs). Highly effective vaccines against COVID-19 may hold an outsized benefit for TFWs, particularly those living in congregate settings where protective measures such as social distancing are not possible. While some studies of migrant destination countries have included migrants, no study to date has sought to understand variations in vaccine hesitancy among individuals in a single migrant source population across different destinations. Such a design is critical for understanding how the context of immigration affects levels of hesitancy among migrants from similar conditions of origin. This observational study leverages longitudinal data from an ongoing monthly rapid-response survey of TFWs from Bangladesh (n = 360). Overall vaccine hesitancy was 25%, with significant variation by host country. Multivariate analyses confirmed that immigration system factors and threat perception are the strongest predictors of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for TFWs. The predicted probability of hesitancy for an undocumented TFW was 0.405, while the predicted probability for those with valid visas was 0.207 (p
ISSN:2328-8604
2328-8620
DOI:10.1080/23288604.2021.1991550