UK-based Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) commissioned a study on Wednesday that said that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups are reluctant to take COVID-19 vaccine.
As the UK authorised Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for public use and covered nearly 138,000 people in the first week, the study found that three in four (76 per cent) Britishers would readily take the COVID-19 vaccine shot if recommended by their doctors. Just 8 per cent of the lot said that they would not.
However, the approval for COVID-19 vaccine shot in the BAME group looked meek with just half of the people or 57 per cent agreeing to take the shot. Confidence was found the least in people from the Asian community as on 55 per cent of them said yes to the vaccine, the study says.
“We have known for years that different communities have different levels of satisfaction in the NHS (National Health Service) and more recently we have seen anti-vaccination messages have been specifically targeted at different groups, including different ethnic or religious communities,” said Christina Marriott, Chief Executive of RSPH.
“But these are exactly the groups which have suffered most through Covid. They continue to be most at risk of getting ill and most at risk of dying. So, the government, the NHS and local public health must rapidly and proactively work with these communities. And their most effective ways of working will be with the local community groups," she said.
As more vaccines such as Oxford University’s AstraZeneca is being prepared and is likely to launch in the coming weeks, the British government is keen to get the message of safety and regularity of the COVID vaccine out in order to contain with widespread.
