The U.K.’s health secretary warned on Wednesday that “deadly” misinformation on the coronavirus vaccine is undermining global immunization efforts.
The Associated Press reported that Matt Hancock, at an international meeting led by Britain to encourage vaccine uptake, said “a worldwide pandemic of misinformation” is threatening the push.
“The speed of misinformation is a deadly threat,” Hancock said at the one-day virtual Vaccine Confidence Summit, attended virtually by diplomats, politicians and academics, including President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci.
Heidi Larson, a professor of anthropology who leads the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said doubts people have regarding vaccines have “been brewing for a while,” according to the AP.
She added, however, that the pandemic intensified these issues.
“COVID has laid bare a lot of underlying issues of trust and distrust,” Larson said.
She specifically pointed to the flip-flopping of some European countries when it came to administering the AstraZeneca vaccine, the AP reported. Some nations have limited distribution of the shots because of a potential link between the vaccine and rare blood clots.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has not been approved for use in the U.S.
Larson said the blood clots reports “shook the confidence of a number of African countries.”
“That global knock-on effect is another phenomenon we’re seeing in a different light,” she said, according to the AP.
She said the best move governments can make is to bridge “the massive divide in access to vaccines” globally.
Larson’s comments come as the issue of global vaccine inequality is coming to the forefront.
While wealthy countries have been able to obtain large amounts of vaccines and inoculate their citizens, low- and middle-income countries have had a more difficult time distributing the shots.
This has been in part because wealthy countries, including the United Kingdom, have been reluctant to share doses with other nations before their own citizens are fully inoculated, the AP noted.
Great Britain’s Department of Health announced on Wednesday that 75.2 percent of people ages 18 and over in the U.K. have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, and 49.5 percent are fully vaccinated, according to the AP.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. will soon announce the process for how it will distribute 80 million coronavirus vaccine doses worldwide.