How about a beer with your shot?

With reports of stubborn levels of vaccine hesitancy overseas, New Zealand may have to get creative to coax the unwilling into getting a Covid jab.

What might work? Pineapple Lumps? A steak and cheese pie? A pint of Speight’s?

The US states of New Jersey and Connecticut are offering free beer as a reward for holdouts to take their medicine. Businesses have joined in with offers to workers of cash, credit and time off. AP noted other lures included savings bonds, a chance to win an all-terrain vehicle, free haircuts and popcorn, and marijuana “joints for jabs”.

The prospect of a brew with your shot comes as America’s vaccination rate is declining and achieving herd immunity looks out of reach.

Health experts worry pockets of low vaccination could allow the virus to keep churning out troublesome variants.

Vaccine hesitancy has been particularly noticeable among conservatives, polls show.

Knowing people in some countries are ignoring available vaccines adds to frustration outside the US and elsewhere about having to wait for the doses. It’s happening as India is suffering through a devastating coronavirus surge.

France’s Foreign Minister, JeanYves Le Drian, predicted coronavirus would be a problem until 2024 unless vaccine production was ramped up.

New Zealand, Australia and much of Asia have been behind on vaccination. The one advantage in being slow is we can read research into data on how rollouts elsewhere have gone.

A study on Israel’s rollout in

The Lancet last week showed that two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were more than 95 per cent effective against infection, hospitalisation and death.

A week after the second dose, the vaccine provided 95.3 per cent protection against infection,

96.7 per cent protection against death, a 97 per cent shield against symptomatic infection and a

97.2 per cent guard against hospitalisation.

Hopefully, hesitancy will not be such a problem in New Zealand, even though we are not immune to vaccine disinformation.

Anyone with an inkling of how bad Covid-19 has been out in the world will not require much persuading.

Anyone with a healthy fear of the various variants will line up.

Anyone with elderly parents will be urging them to get it.

Anyone who is itching to travel will be keen.

At a practical level, people are also used to being offered flu jabs at their GP or workplace. It shouldn’t be daunting.

The usual, short-term sideeffects are soreness at the injection area and some tiredness.

We had to treat the coronavirus as a common enemy last year, now the vaccines are a common solution.