Impact evaluation of a youth led intervention to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

COVID-19 vaccination rates in South Africa remain low at 51% of the adult population being fully vaccinated, defined as having two shorts of the COVID-19 vaccine with or without a booster. To improve vaccine uptake, a community-based intervention was tested in a high vaccine hesitancy community in South Africa. Trained community youths used social media, face to face interactions, door to door and neighbourhood outreach activities to deliver the intervention. To assess if the intervention had an impact, data was collected before the intervention and after the intervention in two districts, Wentworth an intervention site and Newlands East a control site. Both districts are in KwaZulu Natal Province, South Africa. The following outcomes, changes on perceptions and knowledge about COVID-19, intention to get vaccinated for those who were not fully vaccinated and vaccination uptake were assessed using difference-in-difference methods applied through Augmented Inverse-Probability Weighting and contrasts of Potential Outcome Means (POM). One thousand, one hundred and fifty (1 150) participants agreed to take part in the study at baseline, and 916 (80%) were followed up after the 9-week intervention period. Intention to get vaccinated for COVID-19 was higher (difference-in-difference, DID 20%, 95% CI 6% - 35% higher), more people were fully vaccinated (DID 10%, 95% CI 0% - 20%) or partially vaccinated (DID 16%, 95% CI 6% - 26%) in Wentworth the intervention site compared to Newlands East, the control site. There were noticeable increases on the percentage of study participants indicating trust on the Government's COVID 19 programme, from 24% at baseline to 48% after the intervention in the intervention group than in the control group, 26% baseline and 29% at follow-up. There was a 10% (absolute) increase on the percentage of participants' saying they believed health care workers provided reliable information, 58% at baseline and 68% at follow-up in the intervention group, but there was little change in the control group 56% and 57% for baseline and follow-up respectively. The youth-led intervention implemented in Wentworth, a community with a high rate of vaccine hesitancy, was effective in increasing vaccination uptake. Given the low COVID-19 vaccine coverage in South Africa and across the African region, as well as the new emerging variant of concern (XBB 1.5), there is an urgent need to scale up such intervention at the community level to address persistent misinformation and promote vaccine equality.