Boosting COVID-19 Vaccination Uptake Using Wastewater Surveillance: A County-Randomized Controlled Trial

Vaccinations are among the most successful and critical public health interventions. Despite the enormous protection that vaccines provide to public health, both delays and refusals of vaccines (vaccine hesitancy) are on the rise. Given that low vaccination rates present both an individual and community risk, it is critical that measures are taken to increase vaccination uptake in both rural and urban counties in New York. Wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 has been shown to be a leading indicator of pending surges. This study will examine whether a communications campaign based upon SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance data can increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

Forty counties have been selected for the communication campaign (20 in the treatment group and 20 in the control group). A difference-in-differences method will be applied to assess the impact of the communications campaign on vaccine uptake, which observes the outcomes between a control and treatment group over pre- and post-intervention time periods. The communications campaign will be evaluated using the change in vaccination status of residents of the treatment and control counties. Outcomes will also be compared between demographic groups including race and ethnicity because of differences in vaccination rates that have been already observed.

We hypothesize that information regarding COVID-19 provided by wastewater surveillance that is geographically based and more local to communities will increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake. This theory of local information having an impact on health behavior is a novel application of the health belief model to increase vaccine uptake.