  We propose a kinetic model for understanding the link between opinion
formation phenomena and epidemic dynamics. The recent pandemic has brought to
light that vaccine hesitancy can present different phases and temporal and
spatial variations, presumably due to the different social features of
individuals. The emergence of patterns in societal reactions permits to design
and predict the trends of a pandemic. This suggests that the problem of vaccine
hesitancy can be described in mathematical terms, by suitably coupling a
kinetic compartmental model for the spreading of an infectious disease with the
evolution of the personal opinion of individuals, in the presence of leaders.
The resulting model makes it possible to predict the collective compliance with
vaccination campaigns as the pandemic evolves and to highlight the best
strategy to set up for maximizing the vaccination coverage. We conduct
numerical investigations which confirm the ability of the model to describe
different phenomena related to the spread of an epidemic.
