Coronavirus: Anti-vax wrongs ‘must be righted’

Public health experts calling for a mass education campaign to battle widespread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

A protestor holding a placard is seen during the 'Wake Up Australia!' march against mandatory vaccinations at Hyde Park in Sydney.

A rise of “anti-vaxxer” sentiment in Australia risks derailing the rollout of any eventual COVID-19 vaccines, with public health experts calling for a mass education campaign to battle widespread misinformation.

Mater Hospital Infectious Diseases director Paul Griffin, who is leading global efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, said the dissemination of misinformation across social media and other channels needed to be ­urgently addressed.

“It’s one thing to develop a ­vaccine, but if there’s not sufficient uptake then the vaccine — and all the work and all the billions of dollars that have gone into developing a vaccine — may be for next to nothing if there’s not sufficient concern,” Dr Griffin told The Australian.

“So I think it’s of enormous concern and something that we shouldn’t be having to think about, but we are already having to talk about a lot already.”

While a vaccine is still months away from being developed, Dr Griffin said the return to “normality” required “effective coverage”, meaning between 60 and 80 per cent of the population needed to be vaccinated for it to work.

“The motivation to get that has never been higher, the drive to try and have immunity to have a vaccine has never been more important, and for that to be undermined by people opposing it based on misinformation — again, it kind of blows my mind,” he said.

An Essential poll conducted in mid-May found that one in eight people agreed with the statement “the COVID-19 virus is not dangerous and is being used to force people to get vaccines”. This increased to one in five among those aged 18-34.

Immunisation researcher Margie Danchin shares Dr Griffin’s concerns. She said that with the vaccine’s effectiveness likely to be around 50 or 60 per cent, significant coverage will be critical.

But she said the effectiveness would be severely undermined if proportions of the population refused to be vaccinated.

“I think it’s a problem, and it’s becoming more so. I think we have all become aware of anti-vax sentiment since the pandemic started, and definitely when these COVID-19 vaccines become available — which we assume could be as early as next year — we can’t ­assume the population is just going to accept a COVID-19 vaccine,” Professor Danchin said.

In addition to conspiracy theories frightening people, many immunisation experts believe the population will be wary of any ­vaccine that is developed quickly.

Professor Danchin said an ­education campaign that reached out to various groups — particularly culturally and linguistically diverse communities – would be critical for the necessary uptake to be successful.

Despite the pressing need to confront the issue, with the resurgence of infections across Melbourne, Professor Danchin said she didn’t know of any federal or state government initiatives to confront the looming problem.

“These vaccines are going to be rolled out in the midst of all these pervasive online anti-vax campaigns on social media,” she said.

Australian Vaccination-risks Network spokeswoman Meryl Dorey said the organisation had had a “huge increase” in interest recently, both on social media and by way of financial supporters. She said she wouldn’t be comfortable with a vaccine unless it had been tested for a “long period of time”, asserting that multiple stages of the vaccine’s development had been skipped or rushed through.

However, Dr Griffin rejected the notion, saying he was completely confident his vaccine was safe to be given to people now.

“These days, vaccine development is so tightly regulated, partly because of all this. We have to have such robust processes around every step that we can’t possibly not do anything that’s not above board,” he said.