Misinformation Could Make People Turn Against COVID-19 Vaccines – Study

LONDON (Reuters) – Conspiracy theories and misinformation fuel mistrust of vaccines and could push levels of potential COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the US and Britain below needed rates to protect communities from disease, a study discovered 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 that scientists believe are necessary to provide so-called ‘herd immunity’ .

“Vaccines only work if people take them. The misinformation plays on existing concerns and uncertainty about new vaccines (COVID), as well as the new platforms used to develop them, ”said Heidi Larson, professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who co-led the study.

“This threatens to undermine acceptance levels for the COVID-19 vaccine,” added Larson, who is also director of the international Vaccine Confidence project.

The study comes as one of the major vaccination efforts to show promising results this week. Pfizer Inc PFE.N said on Monday that its experimental COVID-19 vaccine was over 90% effective based on provisional data from late-stage trials. The data was seen as a crucial step in the battle to contain a pandemic that has killed more than a million people.[nL1N2HV0TR]

In the disinformation study, 3,000 people surveyed in each country were exposed between June and August to widely disseminated misinformation on social media about a COVID-19 vaccine. The other 1,000 in each country, acting as a control group, received factual information about COVID-19 vaccines.

Before being exposed to misinformation, 54% of Britons said they would “definitely” accept a vaccine, as did 41.2% in the United States. But after learning of disinformation online, that number fell 6.4 percentage points in the British group and 2.4 percentage points in the United States.

In both countries, people without a college degree, people in low-income groups and non-whites are more likely to reject a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the study.

Women were more likely than men to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine, but more respondents in both countries said they would accept a vaccine if it meant protecting family, friends or groups at risk.