More than half of Massachusetts residents are in favor of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for public sector workers and public school students, according to the results of a new UMass Amherst/WCVB poll.Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said they strongly or somewhat support requiring government workers to be vaccinated unless they qualify for a medical or religious exemption. The poll also found that 59% support requiring children age 5-18 to be vaccinated in order to attend public schools. "One of the things that I think is really valuable about the data that you found is that, you know, it really does show that there's still this, this gap that we need to fill in terms of vaccinations in the state," said Dr. Stephen Kissler of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. "So the vaccines that have been administered are already very helpful. They're going to help keep people out of the hospital and they're going to help keep people from getting infected in the first place. But I think what it really shows is that we still got a lot of work to do, especially to convince people to get vaccinated."No vaccine is currently authorized for children younger than age 5 in the United States. The poll of 750 Massachusetts residents was conducted from Nov. 9-16 and the margin of error was 4.3%.Poll toplinesPoll crosstabsOf the 148 respondents who said they had at least one child under the age of 18, 31% said their children will definitely get vaccinated. Another 13% said their children already had at least one dose and 10% said their kids would probably get vaccinated. "I think that to really decrease the amount of spread of this virus, it's going to be really important to vaccinate kids. And that's something that I think we're really going to have to focus on," said Kissler.The poll found strong positive feelings about the quality of schools in Massachusetts, with 83% of the 110 respondents with school-aged children saying they were completely or somewhat satisfied with the education their children are receiving.