By Ben Kerrigan-
Zubaida Haque, the former deputy director of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, and a member of Independent Sage, the independent expert group that makes Covid policy recommendations, claimed vaccine hesitancy was being used as a “red herring” by the government.
Haque also claimed that the British Government should have stalled the lockdown easing which began yesterday, May 17, due to the spread of the Indian variant.
She told Good Morning Britain: ”The health secretary has suggested that this is about vaccine hesitancy, but at the moment his conclusion seems to be based on hospitalisations in Bolton of 18 people, of which a third have been vaccinated.
Now he’s suggesting that of the 11 or 12 they didn’t have their vaccine when they were offered, but we don’t know why they didn’t take up their vaccine – it may have been medical reasons, it may have been other reasons.
This whole notion that, that at the moment, everyone’s freedom is threatened because of vaccine hesitancy groups, is absolute nonsense.
The main threat at the moment is this variant is highly transmissible – it’s 50% more transmissible than the Kent variant – and it is rapidly spreading across the country.
Encouraging members of the public to get vaccinated, Haque said it would take another two months before all adults were vaccinated, that the government had to set the right policy now, and that this week’s easing of lockdown restrictions should have been delayed.
She also said that it was a mistake to blame people for vaccine hesitancy. She said:
”With vaccine hesitancy, there are a wide variety of reasons that people are hesitant and nervous about taking up the vaccine.
‘The research has shown that it is about anxieties and concerns ranging from side effects, to whether the vaccine will work, to whether it will affect fertility, to people having underlying illnesses and wondering whether it will affect them. And then, of course, there are issues with some communities about long-term distrust.
The most important thing with vaccine hesitancy is not to blame, it’s not to stigmatise, is not to point the finger, but to ask those communities: What are their concerns? And help them to take up the vaccine”.
The transmissibility of the Indian variant is a problem, which also tests the efficacy of the vaccine for the many millions in the UK that have already been vaccinated. If variants can easily penetrate vaccines, it calls for more advanced and sophisticated vaccines to be developed .
Vaccine hesitancy among certain individuals or groups of individuals cannot be totally eliminated, but the resistance of vaccines to new variants is a critical area still being worked on and developed.