Data and Code for: Government Trust and Covid-19 Vaccination: The Role of Supply Disruptions and Political Allegiances in Sierra Leone

The mass rollout of a novel adult vaccine mid-pandemic required people worldwide to trust their governments' recommendations and vaccine delivery processes. Vaccine supply disruptions and political allegiances risked undermining this trust. We use data on the universe of Covid-19 vaccines in Sierra Leone to answer two questions. First, whether the relationship between support for Covid-19 vaccination and support for the party in power holds in a low-income environment (Sierra Leone) where trust in vaccines is traditionally high. Second, whether interruptions to vaccine supply reduced take-up of second doses. As with many other countries, we see a relationship between a region's long-term association with the party in power (proxied by ethnicity or language) and the take-up of the Covid-19 vaccine. A year since the start of the Covid-19 vaccination, Temne chiefdoms (associated with the main opposition) have an 18 percentage point lower take-up of Covid-19 adult vaccines compared to 52% take-up in Mende chiefdoms (associated with the ruling party). However, this is not a Covid-19 specific pattern. Temne areas had lower childhood vaccination rates pre-Covid even when the Temne-associated party is in power. This suggests take-up of Covid-19 vaccines in Sierra Leone was not politicized and not undermined by a lack of trust in the party in power. Moreover, we find that those who experienced vaccine stockouts when they were due for their second Covid-19 vaccine were just as likely as those not experiencing stockouts to eventually receive their second dose, even though they had to wait longer to receive it.<br>This is the data and code accompanying the paper.