Misinformation could prompt people to turn against Covid-19 vaccines

LONDON: Conspiracy theories and misinformation fuel mistrust in vaccines and could push levels that potential Covid-19 vaccines are taken in the United States and Britain below the rates needed to protect communities against the disease, a study found on Thursday.

The study of 8,000 people in the two countries found that fewer people would “definitely” take a Covid-19 vaccine than the 55% of the population scientists estimate is needed to provide so-called “herd immunity”.

“Vaccines only work if people take them. Misinformation plays into existing anxieties and uncertainty around new (Covid)vaccines, as well as the new platforms that are being used to develop them,” said Heidi Larson, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who co-led the study.

“This threatens to undermine the levels of Covid-19 vaccine acceptance,” added Larson, who is also director of the international Vaccine Confidence Project.The study comes as one of the major vaccine efforts showed promising results this week.

Pfizer Inc PFE.N said on Monday its experimental Covid-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective based on interim data from late stage trials. The data were seen as a crucial step in the battle to contain a pandemic that has killed more than a million people.

In the misinformation study, 3,000 respondents in each country were exposed between June and August to widely circulating misinformation on social media about a Covid-19 vaccine. The remaining 1,000 in each country, acting as a control group, were shown factual information about Covid-19 vaccines.

Meanwhile, Over half of the French have broken the rules governing the second coronavirus lockdown, a survey showed on Thursday, half-way through the new confinement period. The Ifop survey confirmed that the French are taking the second nationwide shutdown far less seriously than the first in March-April.

It showed that 60 percent had flouted the rules at least once, either by giving a false reason for going out on their self-signed permission slip or by meeting up with family and friends. The figure was far higher than during the first lockdown when the proportion of rule-breakers stood at under 40 percent during the first six weeks.

The most common transgression (24 percent of respondents) was giving a false reason for going out on the permission slips that all citizens are required to download and fill out before leaving home.

Others flouted the rules by having family around to visit or went to visit family (24 percent) or met up with friends (20 percent). Nine percent of respondents said they ventured out to meet up with a current or prospective sexual partner, 3 percentage points more than during the first confinement period.

The survey also confirmed that the second lockdown, coming in the heart of winter, is taking a greater toll on public morale than the first.

Over one in four -- 28 percent -- of those questioned said they were feeling blue, compared with one in five in March-April. France, which has lost over 42,000 people to Covid-19, went back into lockdown on October 30 to try to tame a second wave of infections that experts warn could be deadlier than the first.

On Monday, the country recorded 551 deaths from the virus, the highest daily figures since the first wave in March and April. On Thursday, Prime Minister Jean Castex will address reporters about the timid progress made on slowing the spread of virus in the past two weeks.

Small traders fighting for survival had been hoping he would use the occasion to announce that all shops selling non-essential items, such as books and flowers, could reopen. But Health Minister Olivier Veran warned it was "too soon" to begin relaxing the restrictions. "It’s certainly not the moment to drop our guard," Castex told Le Monde newspaper.