Matt Hancock stood up in the Commons yesterday to congratulate himself and the Government on how well it had done recently. More than 2,000 cases of the new “Indian” variant have been detected, nearly 500 of them in Bolton and Blackburn, but Hancock was pleased to tell everyone that he has sent thousands of vaccination and testing staff to the areas, and to Bedford, where there’s another outbreak.
It’s inconvenient timing, given that England has just relaxed restrictions, and the Health Secretary didn’t seem overly keen to talk about the Government’s failure to impose restrictions on travel from India for several weeks after the new variant was known to be causing havoc in south Asia. But he made one interesting point: the majority of people in Bolton and Blackburn who are in hospital with the new variant are of an age who are eligible to have the vaccine, but who have chosen not to.
That is true. And apparently there are “growing concerns” in Downing Street that even a small number of people refusing Covid vaccines could delay the final restrictions in June. Hancock didn’t say it, but there does seem to be an attitude among some people, not just in Government, that vaccine-hesitant people have made their bed and now they need to lie in it. They’ve been offered the jab, they’ve turned it down, and it’s now their own problem.
That’s understandable. After all, the most prominent vaccine sceptics are crankish academics and Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers — although Jeremy himself doesn’t seem completely on board the vaccine train either.
But while the middle-class dinner-party sceptics get the most attention, vaccine hesitancy is actually highest in other demographic groups — notably, ethnic minorities and the most deprived. While more than 90% of Britons over 50 have had at least one jab — and the British are the least vaccine-sceptical nation in the world — coverage varies widely by ethnicity. By April, people of white British or Indian heritage had over 90% take up; but people of Pakistani origin had just 78%, and black African and black Caribbean groups were down at 71% and 67% respectively.
There’s a socioeconomic difference, as well, although it’s not so pronounced. Only 87% of people in the most deprived 20% of the population were vaccinated, compared to 95% of the richest 20%.
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