Aim: The aim of this study was to establish the role of health-related characteristics of European citizens aged 50+ during the second wave of the pandemic in COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy. We specifically focus on relationship between vaccination hesitancy and chronic lung diseases.

Material and methods: We used a data set consisting of over 45 000 records of participants aged 50+ from 28 European countries surveyed during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Data was collected through telephone administered interviews conducted for The SHARE Corona Survey. Participants were asked to report their health problems, subjective rating of health,  household composition, psychological distress, social, occupational and educational status, vaccination status and (when unvaccinated) willingness to vaccinate. We use a logistic regression and mixed models to test the impact of health-related factors and existing lung diseases on vaccination status.

Results: Despite the prevalence of contributors to risk of bad COVID-19 prognosis in the 50+ European citizens, decision to vaccinate was to a great extent correlated with attitudinal factors, employment status, subjective perceptions of health and country of residence. Existence of comorbidities known for enhancing risk of death due to COVID-19 infection such as diabetes and cancer was positively related to vaccination, however chronic lung diseases turned out to be insignificant in the logit model and even negatively related to vaccination in the mixed models approach allowing for between-country differences in intercept.

Conclusions: We argue that there is a need for adressing insufficient education of patients affected by lung diseases, especially in some countries.