The 3000 participants from the Expat.com survey were expats from a plethora of countries. Of the British expats who took part in the survey, 62.9% declared having been vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. Most of them lived in Spain, France and Thailand.
Most of the British respondents who got vaccinated received the Oxford-AstraZeneca (36.96%) or the Pfizer-BioNTech (37.68%) vaccine. Expats having received these two vaccines were mostly living in Europe while expats residing outside of Europe, except for the US, received Sinovac (5.07%) , Sinopharm (7.25%), Covaxin (2.17%) or Sputnik V (2.17%). Only 10.95% of expats who got vaccinated flew back to the United Kingdom to receive their shot.
While the news has been dominated for a while by the risks associated with the vaccine or the challenges faced by the inaccessibility of the vaccine, only 13.04% of the British expats who got vaccinated have said that they faced difficulties getting vaccinated. Of these, 23 % said that they could not get vaccinated as an expat in their host countries or that the vaccine offered in their host country was not recognized in the UK.
The remaining 77% selected the option “Other” and most explained that they had trouble getting an appointment to get vaccinated. A few expats explained that they had trouble getting vaccinated because of the visa they were on. For example, a British citizen living in Saudi Arabia explained that he could not seek an appointment because he was on a Business Visa and had to go to a walk-in centre which is more of a hassle. Another British citizen living in Greece explained that he had not yet received a social security number and therefore, could not get vaccinated for a long time.
Of the 37% of expats who have not been vaccinated yet, 73.13% say that they do intend to get vaccinated in the future. Of the remaining 26.8%, most explain that they would not get vaccinated because they did not want to be injected with a vaccine that had been developed so quickly and for which the long-term side effects have not yet been completely understood.
Of all the British respondents who took part in the survey, 75% explained that they had been satisfied with the services provided by the British government with regards to vaccination of citizens overseas.
Global Data
In all, more than 3000 expats living all over the planet took part in the above survey. In all, 49% of expatriate respondents indicated having been vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. Most of the vaccinated expats received the Pfizer-BioNTech shot (41%) followed by the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot (27%). 84% of vaccinated respondents said they had been vaccinated in their host country. 88% of the respondents indicated that they faced no challenges getting vaccinated and those who did face challenges explained that the vaccines proposed to them were either not recognized by the WHO or by their home country, or that they had trouble getting an appointment to get the shot.
