“The impact of misinformation is very real.”

Sahil Loomba, PHD student and co-author of study, Imperial College

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Could online misinformation stop us ending the pandemic?

A study from the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is the first to quantify the potential impact of online misinformation on vaccine hesitancy.

The world’s leading scientists, experts and health bodies agree that the COVID-19 pandemic can only end with vaccination.

But a 2020 study shows that seeing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines negatively impacts an individual’s willingness to get inoculated.

In the UK and US where the research was carried out, this shift was enough to endanger our ability to end the pandemic through mass immunisation.

You can read the full pre-print of the study here.