Vaccine Misinformation

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 24 November 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:15, 24 November 2020

Well, Llywydd, I thank Joyce Watson for those follow-up questions. She's right to point to the danger of vaccine misinformation—deliberate, malicious misinformation. It's part of a group of attitudes that, unfortunately, have been given credence in other parts of the world. These attitudes emanate from the same group of people who are coronavirus deniers, who try to persuade people to distrust election results, and, as a result, they have a reach into places through social media that could, if things went wrong, do what Joyce Watson said and discourage people who would benefit from vaccination from coming forward. We work with the Cabinet Office in London. They have a rapid response unit, which is expressly there to respond to coronavirus misinformation. And, working with social media platforms, there has been some success, which I'm keen to recognise, in persuading those social media platforms to remove misinformation where it can clearly be identified as such.

I think we have to take some comfort, though, Llywydd, from the actual evidence of what has happened in vaccination programmes over the last period. We have actually gained ground in childhood immunisation programmes during the period of the pandemic. The uptake of the first dose of MMR increased in the first quarter of this year, despite all the difficulties that parents would have experienced in trying to present the child for vaccination. The third scheduled dose of meningococcal group B vaccination is at the highest ever level in Wales. And, of course, we are reaching more people with flu vaccination than ever before, and 70 per cent of people in the over-60 age group have now been vaccinated. It was under 60 per cent this time last year. Thirty seven per cent of under-65s at risk have been vaccinated, and it was 27 per cent this time last year. Seventy three per cent of children aged between four and 10 have been vaccinated. So, while I share the Member's anxieties, the actual behaviour of people in Wales suggests that, when a vaccine is available to them and they have confidence in it, they are coming forward in large numbers, and that's what we will want to encourage when there are vaccines available for coronavirus as well.