Thread by @TimeOutLondon

London has one of the highest numbers of unvaccinated people in the country.

But that's not the full story

👇💉

timeout.com/london/news/wh…

🎄Omicron is running amok in London, putting extreme pressure on the hospitality and entertainment sectors, just as businesses were expecting a bumper Christmas season.

📈Southwark and Hackney have been hit hardest, with cases increasing by more than 70% last week

💉To make matters worse, London has one of the highest numbers of unvaccinated people in the country.

According to official figures, approximately a third of Londoners haven’t received a single jab, and we’re also running behind on the booster rollout

London’s population is generally younger than the rest of the UK’s, and therefore statistically less inclined to get vaccinated.

⚖️But, proportionally fewer people older than 35 have had a jab in London compared to those of the same age in all other English regions

💉So are Londoners really that resistant to getting vaccinated?

Well, it seems like there might be some inaccurate statistics at play.

We spoke to two experts who highlighted some explanations for London’s unusually low numbers

🥼@Azeem_Majeed, professor of primary care and public health at @imperialcollege:

‘London has a very mobile population...That means that people don’t always have a GP in London and some haven’t actually changed their GP, which means they may not get called up for vaccination'

✈️With people coming in and out of the city every day, and traveling internationally, it’s hard for the Greater London Authority to keep track of exactly how many people live in the city.

Majeed:

‘London has quite a high number of people who were vaccinated overseas'

👟Mark Jit, vaccine epidemiology professor at @LSHTM:

‘In the last two years, there have been a lot of people who moved between London boroughs and moved out of London. The London population might not be completely up to date'

🤝The government has reported difficulty in reaching certain socio-economic, ethnic and cultural groups.

And then there’s human complacency.

Majeed:

‘An element of vaccine fatigue is settling in. Some people are asking if they’ll need a fourth injection next year'