“Fake news” about COVID-19 vaccines circulate

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• The president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent called on governments to fight against disinformation regarding Covid-19 vaccines.
• Francesco Rocca said that to beat the pandemic, mistrust in communities across the globe should be first defeated.
• He added that the level of mistrust has been evident since the start of the pandemic referencing a Johns Hopkins University study on 67 countries that showed a decline in vaccine acceptance in the past months.

As the world prepares for the imminent arrival of a possible Covid-19 vaccine, the head of a global humanitarian aid group said on Monday that governments must help stop the growing “fake news” about the vaccines which has become a second pandemic that might hinder efforts to recover from the first.

Noting the growing uncertainty and distrust towards vaccines particularly the coronavirus vaccine that is likely to continue during the pandemic, Francesco Rocca, President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, stressed that measures be immediately enacted to build trust in global communities where “misinformation has taken root”.

“To beat Covid-19, we also need to defeat the parallel pandemic of mistrust that has consistently hindered our collective response to this disease, and that could undermine our shared ability to vaccinate against it,” he said during a virtual meeting with the UN Correspondents Association.

Rocca further cited a Johns Hopkins University study on 67 countries that indicated a significant drop in vaccine acceptance between July and October of this year.

“This high level of mistrust has been evident since the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and have clearly facilitated the transmission of the virus at all levels,” he said.

He also pointed out that distrust and misinformation is a global issue saying some vulnerable and marginalized groups around the globe are not even aware that a pandemic is ongoing. He gave the example of Pakistan where according to a federation survey, 10 percent of respondents didn’t know about COVID-19.

“We believe that the massive coordinated effort that will be needed to roll out the Covid vaccine in an equitable manner, needs to be paralleled by equally massive efforts to proactively build and protect trust,” he added. 

Source: CNN