24 February 2021 - - As US healthcare experts debate the merits of administering two COVID-19 vaccine doses first to fewer recipients, or one dose first to many, new data from InCrowd show that 70% of US infectious disease physicians agree with the vaccine dosing guidelines that states should vaccinate fewer people with both doses of the approved, two-dose vaccines.

The remaining 30% of doctors would prefer vaccinating as many people as possible with one dose as a priority.

In a marked change, 78% % of ID doctors now say they now trust the prescribing of COVID-19 vaccines, a significant uptick from 47% in October 2020 while roughly double the % of respondents now say they trust federal vaccine safety policy (50% up from 26% in October).

Data are in the Wave 3: Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccine Development report from InCrowd, the pioneer for real-time, high-quality primary market intelligence for the life science industry. The report is the latest in a multi-part COVID-19 tracking series.

Along with increasing trust in Federal vaccine safety policy, 44% of ID doctors report confidence in state and local vaccine safety policy, up from 36% in October.

However, overall confidence in local and state policies about the vaccine roll-out and distribution has declined by 34% and 54% respectively, from October 2020.

ID physicians also delayed their estimates of a return to normal for pre-pandemic healthcare practices until March 2022--five months later than their estimate in October 2020.

Additionally, they raised the threshold for herd immunity to 75%, up from 71% in October, while acknowledging that many of TODAY's pandemic-driven healthcare process changes are here to stay.

Over two thirds of the physicians in the report already had received the full vaccination course, and another quarter had received their first dose, at the time of response on January 21-22, 2021.

Yet only 7% of respondents said their facilities' COVID-19 mitigation procedures had changed since staff vaccinations were underway--and those cited changes were small, such as making routine COVID-19 testing a requirement only for non-vaccinated staff.

Verbatim remarks on the two-dose versus one-dose strategy showed competing considerations of efficacy vs. herd immunity.

The next approved vaccine in the US will be Johnson and Johnson's candidate, cited by 72%, followed by the AstraZeneca/University of Oxford candidate, at 62%, and Novavax at 21%.

It will take until October 2021 for vaccine availability without a priority ranking.

Most ID doctors--67%--plan to continue mask-wearing and social distancing until herd immunity is reached.

Seventy-six % of respondents anticipate that telehealth will remain once the vaccine is widely available--significantly more than in October 2020, along with a significant rise in respondents who anticipate that visitors will be allowed, that widespread easing of restrictions and reopenings will occur, and less stringent PPE rules will be enforced.

When asked what COVID-19 mitigations doctors, themselves, want to see retained, more than nine in 10 cited hand hygiene practices, telehealth and widespread investment in public health.

Data in the Wave 3: Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccine Development report were sourced January 21-22, 2021 from InCrowd's proprietary panel of HCPs.

The n=100 respondents included US infectious disease physicians practicing at community hospitals, academic hospitals and office-based practices --each of whom completed a 10-minute MicroSurvey. For more information download the full Wave 3 report here.

Apollo Intelligence launched with the 2019 acquisition of InCrowd, the pioneer of real-time automated insights for the life sciences industry.

To complement InCrowd and strengthen its global reach, in 2020 Apollo acquired SurveyHealthcareGlobus, the global market leader of first-party healthcare data collection and custom survey solutions.

Apollo provides access to 2m healthcare stakeholders worldwide--including physicians, patients, caregivers, and allied healthcare professionals.