Investigating the motivations and barriers of people's participation in the vaccination program against covid19 disease in Semnan city in 1400- a qualitative study

Vaccines are the most successful and cost-effective public health tools that have helped control, eliminate, or eradicate many infectious diseases, and are the key intervention to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the World Health Organization recommends that to increase the acceptance of vaccination, each country should identify and provide appropriate strategies to increase the motivation and desire of people and also to solve the challenges created to receive the vaccine. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the motivations and challenges of the participants in the COVID-19 vaccination program, particularly with PastoCovac which was jointly developed by the Finlay Institute of Vaccines in Cuba (IFV) and Pasteur Institute of Iran (PII), and to achieve a better understanding of the challenges of vaccination in the Iranian society, and to find ways to increase and strengthen the motivations.

A purposeful sample of people who visited a major urban health center in Semnan were approached for this qualitative study to reach data saturation (30 people) with open questions in a 30-minute interview. Relatively, after conducting the interview, the audio file was listened to carefully and if necessary intermittently by the interviewer and transcribed. The overt and hidden content of data obtained from the statements were checked and then the traditional content analysis was used to develop meaningful clusters of themes.

The main themes of people's motivations identified in the current research include controlling disease and reducing mortality, protecting health and establishing collective safety, improving social and economic conditions, advancing medical knowledge, trust and credibility of the Pasteur Institute of Iran (PII), acceptable possible side effects and The high effectiveness, local production of the vaccine are the unique characteristics of the vaccine, while the obstacles identified are: false and ignorant beliefs, lack of trust in the vaccine, people's fear and worry of side effects, the unique characteristics of the vaccine, lack of universal acceptability, insufficient recognition of vaccine characteristics.

PastoCovac as one of the major vaccines against COVID-19 developed jointly by PII and IFV, was acceptable to the Iranian population in every aspect. PastoCovac, therefore, played an important role in achieving e acceptable levels of safety in the country during the pandemic.