Covid-19 vaccine - online misinformation

Covid-19 vaccine – online misinformation

The latest round of the Covid-19 inquiry focuses on vaccines and anti-viral treatment across the UK. Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett set to make recommendations around the use of social media and its role in spreading false information.

Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the inquiry, says the evidence put forward suggests “overwhelmingly” that the UK operated a “robust and sophisticated system. This for ensuring the highest levels of safety”

Vaccines averted ‘more than 120,000 deaths’ in under year

Three sets of data help to show the vaccine programme a success, the counsel to the inquiry says.

Hugo Keith KC refers first to Public Health England, which estimated 44,500 hospitalisations. Also 14,000 deaths averted by the vaccine rollout by June 2021.

To broaden out his point, he cites a World Health Organisation study, which found an estimated 22,000 deaths were avoided between December 2020 and November 2021 in Scotland.

The UK Health Security Agency, meanwhile, said more than 23 million infections and 123,000 deaths were prevented by September 2021 across the UK – nine months after the rollout began.

It’s of the “utmost importance”, Mr Keith says, that by the “particular metric of the need to protect at population level” the vaccine programme “succeeded”.