Vaxi Taxi targets vaccine anxiety as UK minority uptake lags
Pop-up campaign provides jabs plus door-to-door transportation
The Vaxi Taxi was a godsend for Leslie Reid. The 48-year-old stagehand wanted to get a Covid-19 shot, but he was worried about riding public transport to the vaccination centre because his immune system had been weakened by a bout with flesh-eating bacteria that almost cost him his arm.
So Reid jumped at the opportunity when his doctor offered him the shot, together with door-to-door transportation. “I was one of the fortunate ones,” he said after being inoculated inside a black van cab at a community vaccination event in north London.
Community initiative
The ‘Vaxi Taxi’ that ferried Reid to his appointment and whisked him home again is just one initiative doctors and community organisers are promoting as they try to make sure everyone gets inoculated.
A survey commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care found that just 72.5 per cent of Black people in England either have received or would accept the vaccine. That compares with 87.6 per cent for Asians and 92.6 per cent for whites. That disparity is the product of a variety of issues ranging from concerns about vaccine safety and past discrimination in Britain’s health care system to simple ones like transportation.
Dr. Sharon Raymond is one of the activists trying to remove vaccination barriers. The GP and head of the Covid Crisis Rescue Foundation helped organise Sunday’s pop-up vaccination event at Cambridge Gardens where half the residents are from ethnic minorities.
So on a late winter afternoon people got their shots under a bright yellow tent festooned with balloons. Neighbours munched on sandwiches, sipped drinks and stopped to talk to the doctors on hand.’