Caregivers expressed lower willingness to authorize their children’s participation in school-based Covid-19 vaccination programs (21.11% said they would not authorize it).
According to the study’s authors, this may reflect the political climate influencing attitudes toward vaccines in Brazil. During the pandemic, former president Jair Bolsonaro downplayed the risks of Covid-19 for children, questioned vaccine safety, and opposed mandatory vaccination, contradicting the Child and Adolescent Statute.
Even after Anvisa approved Covid-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11, the government organized public hearings where experts opposed to vaccination voiced their opinions. The current Lula government, which began in 2022, and its Ministry of Health announced in 2025 a new initiative to implement national school-based vaccination programs. No further details have been released.
Additionally, as the professor recalls, during the pandemic “there was an announcement that parents would have to sign a liability waiver – something that doesn’t exist when you take your child to receive other vaccines.” For her, the announcement, even though it was not enforced in practice, sent a message that the Covid-19 vaccine was not like the others. “We have very clear evidence that, beyond delays in purchasing vaccines, the government actively took steps to discourage childhood vaccination,” she says, emphasizing that Bolsonaro publicly stated he would not authorize his own daughter to receive the vaccine.
On the other hand, findings regarding the high level of support for school-based dengue vaccination – even though this vaccine was not yet available through the Unified Health System (SUS) at the time of the survey – suggest that acceptance of a vaccine in a school setting does not necessarily depend on its long-standing public use. In the case of covid-19 – a more recent vaccine – researchers point to the negative impact of disinformation campaigns against vaccination, supported by the Brazilian government itself.
Regarding demographic groups, the strongest predictors of opposition to school-based vaccination included being a caregiver only to children under six years old and self-identifying as evangelical. The reasons behind these trends still need further study, but the findings underscore the urgency of developing strategies to rebuild trust within this sizable population group.
