80 per cent of BAME people in part of Wolverhampton 'could refuse vaccine'

Almost 80 per cent of black Afro-Caribbean people in an area of Wolverhampton will not take the Covid-19 vaccine, a councillor has said.

Councillor Olivia Birch made the finding after speaking to members of the community and leaders in the Bilston North area of the city.

Now she has urged people to ignore the cocktail of misinformation and receive their vaccine in light of the "alarming" low uptake figures.

It comes after research revealed black people over 80 in England were half as likely as white people to have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Councillor Birch, who represents Bilston North, said there were fears "communities could split" over the misinformation about the vaccine.

She said: "It's quite alarming. It started off with a feeling, but when you look at the data to back the feeling up it became more alarming.

"I did a video about four weeks ago and started to talk to key people within the community – faith leaders for example – and I really didn't like what I was hearing.

"By the end of it my feeling was about 80 per cent of black Afro-Caribbeans were saying, when the Covid-19 vaccine is offered, they'd say no to it.

"It's worrying because ultimately we'll have communities split as a result of this – and that's my fear, because in that community you will have those who've had it and those who won't have.

"And when we start coming out of lockdown, you'll have groups of people asking 'has that person had the vaccine?' and even that question will pop up within families as well."

Councillor Birch said there was misinformation – as well as fear and mistrust – over the vaccination by people in these communities which needed to be properly tackled.

She added: "A good 80 per cent are not going to take the vaccine, so what's holding back our communities from engaging with it? What's the issue?

"There may be fear, mistrust and obviously there's misinformation. We've got elderly people who are not so IT savvy and they just rely on word of mouth.

"And with younger black people, they use the internet and they can access the information but there's lots of misinformation swirling around at the moment.

"We've known very early on there's an issue with BAME communities [black, Asian, and minority ethnic] being affected disproportionately by Covid-19.

"If a group has been identified as being affected disproportionately like that, you think they would be in a priority list – but they aren't. They are twice as likely to die from this awful virus."

The councillor added there needed to be a "multi-pronged" approach to tackling the issue – which could involve high-profile black celebrities spreading a message that the vaccine is safe.

She added: " It's awful and alarming and the way it needs to be treated is getting trusted people to deal with it. There needs to be more done and that needs to be through a multi-pronged approach – it needs to be that way.

"I'm trying to talk to as many people as possible and go on panels to discuss it. A campaign of mine in my small part of the world, we need to reach out to higher profile black people – the Beverley Knights, the Stormzys – and we can say 'can you get the message across?' because the message needs to come from black people from black people."