Thread by @lewis_goodall

Spent afternoon at a vaccination in centre in Bham

Differing vaccination rates across the city reminds us how complicated the picture is ahead of decisions on unlocking on Monday

We've seen city council data which shows how vastly uneven rollout is across ethnicity and class.

The rate for single dose vaccination for +80s in Birmingham is 85.8%.

Yet in some wards, especially BAME majority wards it is far lower:

Sparkbrook & Balsall Heath East: 57.0%
Balsall Heath West: 65.4%
Alum Rock: 59.4%
Aston: 61.1%
Newtown: 59.8%
Lozells: 64%
Handsworth: 68.9%

Every one of those wards has a very high BAME % population- in some cases over 90%.

No surprise when you breakdown 80+ vaccination rates across Brum by ethnicity (Bham and Solihull CCG)

White B 93%
British Indians 86%
Chinese 67%
Bangladeshi 67%
Pakistanis 66%
Caribbean 64%

But in even some much whiter areas take up is lower than average

So a ward like Kingstanding which is 83% white still only has a take up rate for the over 80s of 77.5%

Indeed the Council says in the doc that deprivation is one of the key factors in determining take up

In fact the docs say there's now a 15 point gap between take up for the first dose for the over 80s in the most deprived wards in the city compared to the most affluent wards.

Of course, everyone is being offered a vaccine, it's about take up.

The vaccine centre I was in was the Al-Abbas Islamic Centre in Balsall Heath.

Balsall Heath is one of the poorest wards in the country with long established health inequalities.

The clinical lead at the centre tells me how ingrained scepticism in his community has become: "Initially we were asked is it safe to have. Is it halal? Are the ingredients safe? Will it change my genes? Will it affect my fertility? Will I get tracked?"

"The correlation is due to deprivation, language and mistrust for higher authorities. It plays a huge part."

Setting up the centre in the mosque has really helped. But the local Imam told me that it still wasn't enough- that more needed to be done in terms of community outreach, otherwise with unlocking based on national figures, there was a long term risk of communities like his…

...continue to struggle. "If we don’t go for our jabs- it’s big danger. It's about trust and we [community leaders] have it. We've seen so many die in my community, I've buried 19 people this past year year, this year so far we’ve buried five or six this year- this is reality."

Scientists too are concerned about the differentials between white and BAME communities and rich and poor and that we should think about them more when considering unlocking.

Earlier I spoke to Professor Janet Lord of Bham University, she also sits on SAGE. She said the differentials between communities and the fact the data still isn't complete means it isn't the time to being making decisions on unlocking.

I also spoke to @liambyrnemp, one of the local MPs. He says that unless we work out a plan to deal with differing vaccination rates across communities and one to deal with already appalling health inequalities, deprived communities will be scarred by this for decades to come.

I just can't emphasise enough how big these vaccine disparities are.

Look at these two slides, one for Ladywood constituency (inner city, BAME, poor) and one for Sutton Coldfield (richer, whiter). It's a completely different picture.

Become commonplace to say about Covid globally that none of us are safe til we all are.

So it is in Britain- and getting lost in how we talk about vaccines is how many communities are at risk of being left behind.

Full report from me and @lharriswhite

Nadhim Zahawi asked about my Bham data story Today this morning. Says government is seeking to step up role of community pharmacists in rollout in more deprived areas. Still not much of a sense of a wider structural analysis of why some deprived areas might have take up issues.

Some of those more systemic problems probably have their roots in some of the issues Nasar described below- similar to other issues we’ve seen apropos deprivation and the pandemic.

More broadly, as @d_spiegel has argued, it would be very useful to see more granular (ward level) data for other local authorities.

More from John on how these differentials could impact any potential “vaccination passport” programme