*1.1. Coronavirus Disease 2019 in the UK and Vaccination Uptake*

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by novel severe acute respiratory Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019. As has already been well reported, COVID-19spread rapidly across the globe and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2020. In late January 2020, the first case was reported in the United Kingdom (UK) and by the end of March 2020, 6650 cases had been recorded in the UK and a nationwide lockdown had begun [1].

On 8 December 2020, the UK became the first country to rollout a COVID-19 vaccination programme; and by 15 August 2021, an estimated 87.1% of the adult population in the UK had received one dose of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 74.9% were fully vaccinated with two doses [2]. Even before the first dose was administered, false rumours and misinformation had begun to circulate on social media, at times fuelled by the idea that emergency regulatory approval of these vaccines was linked to unreliability or safety concerns, threatening to diminish public confidence in the vaccination programme [3]. By 15 August 2021, the cumulative total of deaths in the UK where the death certificate mentioned COVID-19 as one of the causes was 157,361. The cumulative total number of doses of vaccinations administered in the UK on the same date was 88,037,283 [2].

**Citation:** Roe, C.; Lowe, M.; Williams, B.; Miller, C. Public Perception of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccinations on Social Media: Questionnaire and Sentiment Analysis. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2021**, *18*, 13028. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413028

Academic Editors: Paolo Roma, Merylin Monaro, Cristina Mazza and Anthony R. Mawson

Received: 24 September 2021 Accepted: 7 December 2021 Published: 10 December 2021

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