))
How Malta Beat Vaccine Disinformation and Hesitancy to Become a COVID-19 Overachiever
Manage episode 329151766 series 3352278
Content provided by Daiva Repečkaitė and Eva von Schaper, Daiva Repečkaitė, and Eva von Schaper. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Daiva Repečkaitė and Eva von Schaper, Daiva Repečkaitė, and Eva von Schaper or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
The tiny island of Malta is an overachiever in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Politico. Before the end of August, the Maltese government announced that 90% of the population over 12 years of age is fully vaccinated. This meant that the first phase of the vaccination programme was largely complete before rolling out boosters to vulnerable populations from mid-September.
But it’s not enough to say that vaccinating the population was easy because Malta is so small. Data from Eurobarometer surveys and the WHO show that vaccine hesitancy was not that uncommon before the pandemic. In the Eurobarometer survey, over a third said they believed in the conspiracy that viruses were produced in government labs in order to control the population - that’s above the EU average. So how did Malta manage such a successful vaccination campaign?
To find out, Daiva talked to public health and infodemic expert Prof. Neville Calleja and the vaccination programme’s coordinator Steve Agius. In this episode, Eva and Daiva discuss what they learned.
Our reporting is supported by IJ4EU and Alfred Toepfer Stiftung. Please subscribe to our newsletter, and this show on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify or another platform of your choice. Follow us on Facebook as @theinoculation, on Twitter as @TInoculation, and on Instagram as @the_inoculation
47 episodes
Share
