The body responsible for health in England has not revealed whether it is recording the ethnicity of people vaccinated against covid-19, despite calls from scientists for the release of more data on the ongoing roll-out of covid-19 vaccines.
While it may still be too early to make conclusions from such figures, collecting and publishing them as vaccines are being rolled out could help monitor vaccine uptake across different communities and inform efforts to ensure equitable access, says Naveed Sattar at the University of Glasgow, UK. In particular, there have been reports in the UK of increased vaccine hesitancy among people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, who have also been found to be at an increased risk from covid-19.
鈥淐urrently, the only publicly available data published is on the ,鈥� the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK government department that oversees health in England, said in an email to 快猫短视频. These figures include the number of people vaccinated so far, but there is limited information available about the demographics of those who have had a shot.
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A by the Royal Society for Public Health last year found that only 57 per cent of respondents from BAME groups said they were likely to accept a covid-19 vaccine, compared with 76 per cent for the general population and 79 per cent for white respondents.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a greater susceptibility to severe disease in these [BAME] groups and therefore there鈥檚 an even greater need to make sure that they get vaccinated,鈥� says Sattar. 鈥淚f there鈥檚 early-warning signals that there鈥檚 less uptake [among BAME groups], then that really means that something needs to be done.鈥�
Members of Independent SAGE 鈥� an independent group of scientists publishing advice on covid-19 for the UK government 鈥� have also on its covid-19 vaccination roll-out. In addition to monitoring the numbers of people getting vaccinated, it is also important to gather other demographic information, such as age, ethnicity and deprivation, said Christina Pagel at University College London, during an Independent SAGE briefing on 8 January.
鈥淲e need to know where there are pockets of people who aren鈥檛 getting vaccinated, where there are communities that we鈥檙e not protecting and not reaching, and how can we change that?鈥� said Pagel.
In the US, where people from racial and ethnic minority groups have also been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, the country鈥檚 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it is collecting data on the race and ethnicity of people who get vaccinated, although this information isn鈥檛 yet publicly available.
The CDC told聽快猫短视频聽that it plans to get some of the data added to the聽, but isn鈥檛 yet able to say when.
