LONDON • The UK will need more than just a simple communication campaign to ensure people get a potential coronavirus vaccine after research showed that less than a third of the population would definitely seek to be inoculated.

A survey by King’s College London and Ipsos Mori released yesterday showed that British people who are sceptical about science and authority were more likely to say they’d refuse a vaccine. While 43% said they’d be very likely or fairly likely to get a vaccine, if one becomes available, 16% said they are unlikely to or definitely won’t and 11% didn’t know.

Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, said the study revealed that the government would need to conduct a nuanced campaign to tackle misinformation. Of the 2,237 people surveyed, vaccine scepticism was higher in people who said wearing face masks is bad for people’s health and that there’s too much fuss being made about the pandemic, which has killed more than 46,000 people in the UK.

Those who rely on WhatsApp for a great deal of their Covid-19 information are also unlikely to get a potential coronavirus vaccine. People between the ages of 55 and 75 were twice as likely to say they’d get a vaccine than those between 16 and 34. — Bloomberg