Assessing Community Perception in Brunei Darussalam on the Necessity and Efficacy of COVID-19 Vaccination

The World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed the contagious COVID-19 disease brought on by the coronavirus to be a pandemic on March 11, 2020. In Brunei Darussalam, the Omicron variant has replaced the Delta variant as the predominant variant since 2021, leading to a weekly case count of 29,402 cases with 156 deaths in the week ending March 6, 2022. As a result, Brunei has started the COVID-19 National Vaccination Program (NVP), which was conducted in three phases based on different demographic groups. Brunei Darussalam believes that these vaccines will protect the priority groups that it has identified. The government has made numerous attempts to stop COVID-19 from spreading by adopting a "herd immunity" strategy, in which at least 70-75% of the population gets immunized. The main objective of this study is to learn about the Brunei population’s perceptions and understanding of the necessity and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine. A cross-sectional online questionnaire was distributed to 250 local Muslim respondents using Google Forms. SPSS was used to conduct descriptive statistical analyses [frequency (%)] to represent the characteristics of respondents as well as their perceptions of the necessity and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccination. Based on the data analysis, the majority of the respondents (61.6%) agree on the necessity of taking COVID-19 vaccination will indirectly inhibit viral spread, while 62.4% have neutral views on the vaccine’s efficacy. Therefore, the relevant parties should play a role in building trust in vaccine safety and boosting understanding of the vaccine’s necessity and efficacy.