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Statement of the Problem: Vaccine acceptance by a population is determined by factors like education(Goldstein et al., 2015), various social (Larson et al., 2014b, 2015; Ni et al., 2021)factors and its performance(MacDonald et al., 2015; Ni et al., 2021). The perception of the disease is one of the major factors which determine if people are willing to take vaccine or not. This study aims to evaluate the perception and acceptance of the Covid-19 vaccine in Kenya as the government intends to start immunizing people in 2021. The assessment of the perception and acceptance of the vaccine will help direct the ministry of health in Kenya in sensitization strategies concerning the vaccines and the clarification of myths and misconceptions surrounding the vaccine and the virus. The purpose of this study is to: determine if the perception of the disease influenced vaccine acceptance within the Kenyan population.
Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: Electronically shared questionnaires were used to conduct this survey in the Kenyan adult population in January and February 2021 due to Covid-19 restrictions, to evaluate the Kenyan populations’ Covid-19 perception and relation to Covid-19 vaccine acceptance rate. One-way ANOVA was performed to check whether the perception of respondents and acceptance of the vaccine differed significantly and correlation was done to evaluate the relationship between the perception and vaccine acceptance.
Findings: Out of total sum of 659 participants, 451(68%) perceived the existence of Covid-19 in the country; 338 (75%) were willing to take the vaccine if it was made available to them. Noticeable differences between the perception and acceptance rate of the vaccine across different demographic characteristics.
Conclusion & Significance: Covid-19 perception strongly relates to the acceptance of the vaccine
