Abstract
INTRODUCTION: More than two years after SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan, China, COVID-19 has become one of the most severe pandemics in modern human history. Prior to the widespread availability of specific vaccines in 2021, public opinion surveys indicated significant vaccine hesitancy in 26 European countries. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Epidemiological data on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality for 26 European countries were collected in November 2021 and compared with the proportions of people willing to receive the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine according to public opinion surveys analysed in 2020. Correlations between various variables were calculated using the Pearson correlation test and visualized with the R programming language. RESULTS: Paired Student's t-test revealed no significant differences between survey results and actual vaccination rates (p = 0.9546), suggesting that the polls were good predictors. The percentage of people willing to receive the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was significantly positively correlated with actual vaccination rates (R = 0.72, p = 0.00003) and significantly negatively correlated with the number of cumulative deaths per million people (R = -0.78, p = 0.0000024). However, there was no significant correlation with the number of cumulative cases per million people (R = -0.27, p = 0.18). These findings indicate that vaccines used in Europe were particularly effective at preventing severe COVID-19 and disease-related deaths, but did not necessarily provide strong protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection itself. CONCLUSION: Encouraging widespread immunization through vaccination was crucial for rapidly improving the epidemiological situation in Europe.