Wales Health Minister vows to help dispel BAME vaccine lies

Wales' health minister says he wants to stop false information which might put off people from ethnic minorities from taking the coronavirus vaccine.

Race Council Cymru (RCC) said lies were being shared online and urged the Welsh Government to take action.

Health minister Vaughan Gething said he was "disappointed" to hear of a campaign of "targeted disinformation".

It comes as UK Vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi warned of the impact of such conspiracy theories.

Vaccinations started in the UK last week following the approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.

RCC's Patience Bentu called for "community champions" to spread positive messages about the vaccine.

Patience Bentu wants the Welsh Government to take more action to provide accurate information to ease worries

She said some conspiracy theories were wrongly making out that people from ethnic minorities were being used as "guinea pigs" for the vaccine and so those people would experience any side effects first.

• Ethnic minorities 'less likely to take Covid vaccine'

• Black people 'twice as likely to catch Covid'

A recent study published in eClinicalMedicine/The Lancet suggested those from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds were disproportionately impacted by the virus.

Health minister Vaughan Gething said he would "happily work alongside Race Council Cymru".

Owen Williams said a "perfect storm" had been created

Owen Williams, of social media agency Siml, said the combination of misinformation and the pandemic could lead to a "a perfect storm of problems".

"What needs to happen fundamentally is that the platforms themselves need to get a better handle on the distribution of this fake news and fake content," he said.

Facebook said it "removes Covid-19 misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm, including false information about approved vaccines".

Between March and October it said it had taken down more than 12 million pieces of this type of content on Facebook and Instagram.

Twitter said it prioritised removing Covid-19 misinformation.

It said it had removed thousands of tweets since March but would not take enforcement action on every tweet which contains incomplete or disputed information.