Coronavirus: Vaccination

(asked on 8th March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what work Admiral Associates has undertaken with the Vaccine Taskforce on helping to ensure that covid-19 vaccines are taken up by hard to reach groups.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 11th March 2021

Early in the existence of the Vaccine Taskforce, public communication on vaccines was identified as a key challenge for the successful delivery of COVID-19 vaccines. The Government strengthened its communication function to support this significant undertaking and communication specialists sourced by Admiral (with experience in clinical trials and of working with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)) were brought onboard using the Public Sector Resourcing framework.

The communication specialists sourced by Admiral worked with the NIHR to develop the world’s first national citizen registry so that individuals could sign up to participate in clinical vaccine trials. As a result, over 454,000 people have signed up to date.

Admiral was also involved in creating a proactive communications programme aimed at encouraging greater sign-up to the registry through the “COVID-19: the search for a vaccine” podcast. This provided a factual transparent source of information on vaccines for UK citizens, combating the anti-vaccination movement, and highlighting the UK's role as a leader in vaccine research and development. The podcast included an episode that specifically covered the need to include people from the Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities in trials and addressed some of the concerns within these communities.

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