Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) will launch a campaign fronted by “very sensible” celebrities to persuade people to take coronavirus vaccines, according to reports.
“There will be a big national campaign [to drive take-up],” a source told the Guardian.
“NHS England are looking for famous faces, people who are known and loved. It could be celebrities who are very sensible and have done sensible stuff during the pandemic.”
The left-wing newspaper says Marcus Rashford, a professional football player who has been harrying the government over issues such as free school meals in recent months, is one of the names being considered.
100 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine have been ordered by Boris Johnson’s government, along with several million American-made vaccines
The Guardian reports that the NHS is seeking to recruit “airline cabin crew, firefighters and the jobless” by the “tens of thousands” to administer vaccines via a Kitchener-style ‘Your NHS needs you’ recruitment drive.
“It will be vital that there are clear culturally-tailored communications delivered by trusted local and community leaders, and targeted at the most vulnerable and harder-to-reach communities, and that it is made easy for these populations to access vaccination,” remarked Dr Penelope Toff, who co-chairs the public health medicine committee of the British Medical Association (BMA).
There is concern in some quarters that black and minority ethnic (BAME) people, who are being infected by the Chinese virus at a disproportionate rate, may be particularly reluctant to be vaccinated, with the chief executive of St George’s hospital trust in London, Jacqueline Totterdell, saying she thinks that “there is a lot of anxiety [among staff], and some of the polls we’ve done around south-west London show that as little as 50 per cent of people are willing just to have it without any [assurance about its safety].”
“We might all think people might be rushing to have it, but actually we might find that’s not quite the case,” she added.
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