PHW urges people to get vaccine jab to fight virus

PUBLIC Health Wales has responded to a march involving hundreds of people complaining about vaccines and other Covid measures in Swansea by urging people to continue to get their jabs.

It said there were still a “significant number of people in Wales” who had not yet been fully vaccinated.

Video footage circulating on social media shows people of all ages marching through Picton Arcade in the city centre during the so-called “Swansea Freedom March” on Saturday.

The march is understood to have been organised by a university student and member of the “Students Against Tyranny” campaign group.

One video from the march shows protesters holding banners and signs expressing their dislike of new Covid-19 regulations and ‘Covid passports’.

One sign read, “Say NO to vaccine passports,” while another read, “We won’t be part of their biotech experiment.”

The Students Against Tyranny campaign group calls for people aged 15 to 21 to refuse to get jabbed and refers to coronavirus as “rebranded flu”.

The group, headed by a first year student at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, claims young people are being “pressured and coerced into taking the vaccine”.

Appealing to the public to get vaccinated, a spokesperson for Public Health Wales said: “The coronavirus vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe illness and death.

“Clinical trials have repeatedly shown that the benefits of vaccination against coronavirus considerably outweigh any vaccine-related side-effects. The vaccines work to reduce transmission, symptomatic infection and the severity of symptoms which overall leads to fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths.

“The principle goal of the vaccination programme is to minimise the number of deaths from coronavirus. We continue to advise people to take up the offer of a coronavirus vaccine when they are invited.”

They said that, as of the week ending September 26, 83.5 per cent of the Welsh population over the age of 18 had received two doses of a vaccine.

“It is estimated that vaccines have prevented over 10,000 deaths in the UK so far. The vaccination programme is well advanced in Wales and receiving the vaccine is the most effective way to protect yourself and loved ones, so please do take the offer of a vaccine when it is offered.

“There is still a significant number of people in Wales who have not been fully vaccinated.”