COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among black people in UK halves, new data suggests

Vaccine Hesitancy among black people in the UK has halved, recent data suggests.

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  • Michel Barnier calls for vaccine war ceasefire

    Michel Barnier has called for a ceasefire in Britain’s vaccines war with Brussels in a speech marking his farewell to the European Commission. He issued a veiled rebuke to Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, who has threatened the UK with vaccine export bans amid her row with AstraZeneca over delivery shortfalls. The former chief Brexit negotiator praised the successful British vaccination campaign, which has so far outstripped the EU’s sluggish efforts. "It is true that the UK has a quicker vaccination rate compared to the EU. But the fight against Covid-19 is more than speed of vaccination, important as that is," he said in Zurich on Wednesday night. He added: "We will all find strong and weaker points in how we managed this. But there is no place, in such a serious situation, for polemics and competition. There are so many more reasons to cooperate, in the short and the long term." His comments came the same day that Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, told Britain that "zero" AstraZeneca jabs would be exported from the bloc to Britain until the company fulfilled its orders. "We are just here again to make sure that the [AstraZeneca contract with the EU] is delivered - and of course we are here to also help our British friends," Mr Breton told the Financial Times. "But we have nothing to negotiate." Brussels accuses AstraZeneca of breaking its contract, which the company denies, after it announced that it would not be able to deliver tens of millions of promised doses due to production problems. Mrs von der Leyen briefly threatened to impose a hard border on the island of Ireland to enforce a vaccine export ban against Britain in January. The Telegraph understands that Mr Barnier, who views the avoidance of a hard Irish border as his major achievement in the Brexit negotiations, was not consulted over the idea, which was hastily dropped after protests from Dublin. Since then the dispute has escalated with Brussels introducing tough new export rules, which target countries like Britain with high vaccination rates and low jab exports to the EU. Negotiations continue to resolve the stand-off, which centres on AstraZeneca's supplies at the company’s Halix plant in the Netherlands, but Mr Breton has played down talk of any imminent breakthrough. Mr Barnier said that it was vital that the UK implemented the Northern Ireland protocol, which is the treaty covering the new customs arrangements for the country. Britain unilaterally extended grace periods on customs checks for GB goods coming into Northern Ireland, which the commission said is a violation the treaty Mr Barnier added that the new UK-EU trade frictions were the "reality" of Brexit. "Brexit means recreating trade barriers that had not existed for 47 years," he said. "These new realities, and the concrete problems they pose – from difficulties for UK fishermen to sell their products in the EU to impediments to the mobility of musicians – do not result from EU decisions. They are the direct, automatic, consequences of the UK’s choice to leave the Union, the Single Market and the Customs Union."

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  • Pfizer boss accuses EU of hampering Covid vaccine rollout

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  • Emmanuel Macron announces strict new coronavirus lockdown measures in televised address

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  • Mass Covid testing in schools costing £120,000 for every positive case found

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  • 'White privilege' a counter-productive and divisive term, Boris Johnson's race commission says

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  • Covid Qld: Queensland restrictions for Easter holiday weekend explained as Brisbane coronavirus lockdown ends

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    The use of the vaccine was tested in a trial of 2,260 people aged 12 to 15 in the US.

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