A little under a week after gaining approval for use by U.K. authorities, the United Kingdom will officially begin offering up doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to its citizens on Tuesday (Dec. 8).
Vaccinations will begin in England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland said it would start administering the vaccine early in the week but did not specify which day.
Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, told media outlets over the weekend that 50 hospital hubs across England had already received their allocation of the vaccine, and that the distribution of the vaccine was “really well underway now.” By the end of December U.K. health officials hope to have distributed 4 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which offers up to 95 percent protection against the coronavirus. Thus far the British government has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine so far, enough to vaccinate 20 million people (it is a two-dose vaccine), or about a third of the U.K. population.
And though the U.K. is first out of the gate with approvals and kicking off vaccinations, it will not be alone on the field for long. The U.S. is expected to approve the vaccine within the next week or so, and according to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Americans who want a COVID-19 vaccination should be able to get one by the second quarter of next year.
With the vaccination moving from being a hypothetical to a tangible reality, the questions are starting to pop up as to whether consumers will seek out the vaccine — and when they do, where they go from there.
Consumer Willingness
As the reality of a vaccine has been drawing close, the question of whether or not consumers will show up to get their shot has become increasingly pressing. In the U.K., as vaccinations are scheduled to kick off tomorrow scientists at Keele University and King’s College London have found that 64 percent of people would be likely to get a COVID-19 vaccination when one became available, while 27 percent report being unsure and only 9 percent report they are unlike to get one at all.
This data was notably collected between July 14 and 17, 2020 long before a vaccine was known and in development.
Dr. Sue Sherman, from Keele University’s School of Psychology and joint first author on the study, said the new is encouraging in that so many people at least intend to pursue vaccination, but it cannot be assumed that people will do as they intend around the vaccine, even though there is a pandemic on.
“The scale and impact of COVID-19 are such that when a vaccine becomes available, we need to ensure that uptake is maximized in order to contain the mounting social and economic costs associated with the virus. Despite the pandemic nature and severity of COVID-19, high vaccine uptake cannot be assumed for various reasons, including something called the intention-behavior gap,” Sherman said.
PYMNTS data on U.S. consumers’ intentions to seek a vaccine — gathered after news of the Pfizer vaccine was already in the public sphere — is less encouraging. Only 37.9 percent reported they “strongly” plan to get vaccinated, slightly outnumbered by the 38.4 percent of people who say they “definitely” or “probably” won’t. PYMNTS data, however, was gathered before the second wave of COVID-19 infections began to really gain steam and it seems that the record-setting number of new cases (not to mention the spiking casualty count that is now at 285,000 dead) has inclined Americans to greater vaccine enthusiasm then what PYMNTS was seeing in early November. It seems the 23.7 percent of consumers PYMNTS found to be undecided a month ago have sorted themselves mostly into the “yes” camp.
Trouble is, for the vaccine to deliver the herd immunity necessary for life to return to normal, 80 percent of the population would need to get it. Which means a lot of those “probably nots” need to be transformed into hard yeses over the next several months.
What Happens Next
On the perhaps optimistic assumption that consumers can be persuaded and the various logistical challenges can be overcome of distributing a two-dose vaccine that needs to be stored at a deep sub-zero temperature to be effective, there is the bigger question sitting in the wings of the discussion — what do consumers do next? Do they rush out to concerts, hop on the next plane to Fiji, swear off ever baking another loaf of sourdough bread for the rest of their lives? Do they stay digital or dive back into their physical lives?
There is no clear answer as of yet, although it seems increasingly clear that the great digital shift of 2020 is probably not going to be heading in reverse anytime soon. Because as it turns out, the consumers most eager to get the vaccine were also the most avid digital shifters. Consumers who are likely to get vaccinated are more commonly engaging in digital shopping experiences: 54.8 percent of those who are shopping for groceries online for curbside pickup say they will likely get the vaccine. Similarly, 50.9 percent of consumers that have been ordering food online from quick-service restaurants more frequently say they are likely to get a vaccine.
PYMNTS surveys over the last eight months indicate that, with the exception of dining in restaurants, which consumers have expressed a stronger preference to return to over time, the majority of consumers who have adapted digital habits intend to maintain some or all of them, even in a post-pandemic world.
A world that, hopefully, starts actually coming into focus starting tomorrow in the U.K. when the vaccine starts going out to the people.
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