News from Dr Onkar Sahota: Councils need dedicated funding to tackle vaccine hesitancy

Councils need dedicated funding to tackle vaccine hesitancy in their communities

Councils in London should be given dedicated funding to run multi-lingual campaigns aimed at targeting vaccine hesitancy in their communities, Labour’s London Assembly Health Spokesperson, Dr Onkar Sahota AM, has urged. He said if the problem is not “urgently and robustly addressed”, it would throw a “huge spanner in the works” of the national vaccination programme.

Dr Sahota has written today to the Health Secretary to ask what strategy the Government has in place to tackle misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine and encourage take-up in BAME communities.

This follows a survey published in November by the London Assembly Health Committee which found that a quarter of Londoners would decide against getting the vaccine. A separate poll commissioned by the Royal Society for Public Health in December, found that only 57% of respondents from BAME backgrounds were likely to accept the vaccine, compared to 79% of white respondents.

In his letter, Dr Sahota also raises concerns that too many frontline staff are being offered left-over doses of the vaccine at short notice. With the approval of the third, Moderna vaccine, he is now pressing the Government to come up with a more robust strategy to prioritise frontline workers in the vaccine queue, alongside the elderly and most vulnerable.

Last week, the Mayor of London declared a major incident in the capital, as hospitals have come under unprecedented strain, with COVID-19 infections reportedly accounting for around 58% of all NHS staff absences in London and the South East.

Labour’s London Assembly Health Spokesperson, Dr Onkar Sahota AM, said:

“It has been highly encouraging to see a third vaccine approved, but the obstacles of misinformation and hesitancy lie in the way of reaching our target to get jabs into the arms of two million people each week.



“Our research from City Hall shows that a quarter of Londoners could refuse the vaccine, and this figure is higher when you look at BAME communities. If not quickly and robustly addressed, the scale of this problem could throw a huge spanner in the works of the national vaccination programme.

“As we saw during the initial lockdown period, councils played a vital role in amplifying and targeting multi-lingual public health messaging in their communities. With extra, dedicated funding they could significantly boost local campaigns to tackle vaccine hesitancy.

“I am also pressing the Health Secretary for his reassurances that there will be a tighter strategy in place to vaccinate frontline staff going forward It simply isn’t good enough that so many of our heroic NHS workers are having to rely on leftover doses and ad hoc appointments to protect themselves, their patients and families from the virus”.

ENDS