Covid vaccine take-up rates in some London boroughs are well below UK average

Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hackney and Newham are all well below the national average
PA Wire

Experts today said it was vital to keep offering accurate advice about the safety of vaccines as parts of London continued to experience weaker take-up rates.

Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hackney and Newham are all well below the national average for the proportion of people 80 and older who have had at least one dose.

The NHS Central London clinical commissioning group (CCG) that covers most of Westminster had jabbed 60.8 per cent of this age group by Sunday, the lowest in the capital. This compares with an England-wide average of 95 per cent.

The capital’s best performers include Havering, Harrow, Hounslow, Ealing and the south-west London CCG which includes Croydon, Kingston, Merton, Richmond, Sutton and Wandsworth.

Concerns also remain about vaccine reluctance among some of the BAME communities.

Dr Donald Palmer, an immunologist who has been explaining vaccines to these communities in Brent, Harrow and Hackney, said it was vital to continue to reach out to people even if they had turned down a vaccine on several occasions.

“What is really important is not to have just one conversation,” he said. “It’s primarily about making sure people have the necessary information so they can make an informed choice.”

Dr Viki Male, a reproductive immunology lecturer at Imperial College, has been reassuring women that the vaccines do not present a risk to their pregnancy or fertility. Some NHS trusts have reported that some women of child-bearing age have been reluctant to get the jab because they are pregnant or are planning to start a family.

But Dr Male said pregnant women were now being offered the vaccine. Two clinical trials — one involving the Pfizer jab and one the Janssen “one-shot” jab that is due in the UK later this year — are recruiting pregnant women as volunteers.

She said the fact that 65 women became “accidentally pregnant” during the first vaccine trials — participants had been asked to try not to become pregnant — was “strong evidence that the vaccines are not stopping you from getting pregnant”.

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