Yesterday afternoon there wasn’t a queue at the Lambeth walk-in vaccination centre.
It is just a 30-second walk from Acre Lane in Brixton – newly revealed as having Britain’s highest rate of coronavirus infection.
Only 5% have this disease. The high rate is partially explained by 32.4 percent of residents who are still unvaccinated and unmoved by public interventions.
Why are people refusing to accept a jab in order to defend themselves here in south London? As you stroll down Acre Lane toward Clapham, there is a possible solution.
Written on a charity’s metal clothes recycling bank on the pavement outside Tesco are the words: ‘Fake virus! Fake tests! Fake cases Poison jab! It’s not a vaccine. It’s a poisonous jab!!’
Pictured: Acre Lane in Brixton has the highest Covid rates in Britain so it is also the unvaccinated area in Britain. Daily Mail went to Acre Lane, in Brixton, to learn more.
Turn round and wander back towards Brixton, with its railway and Tube station and the Ritzy cinema, and you come to Acre Lane’s Universal Pentecostal Church.
Most of its worshippers are of African or West Indian descent, reflecting a large portion of Brixton’s population since the Windrush Generation started arriving more than 70 years ago.
The pastor of the church, refusing to be identified, said he doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories and assured the Daily Mail that he didn’t tell his parishioners whether they should have the jab.
Yet despite being 80 – so in a high-risk age group – he has not been vaccinated, let alone had the booster offered just across the road. What is the reason? God is his safety net. The senior Pentecostal churchman said yesterday: ‘We don’t tell people what to do – we let them choose.
‘But we also pray for people, and we tell them to keep out of sinful ways. God tells us in the bible “Let them trust me and I will preserve them”.
‘We believe God has the power to protect us.
‘There’s no need for me to have the vaccine. And people are getting the virus after the vaccine – people have died also.
‘I live my life by the word of God. So far it’s protected me from the virus.’
It is not a good idea to believe that faith and prayer can protect you from the flu.
Pictured is an anti-vaccine message in graffiti placed on the side of a recycling bin at a church.
Brixton’s large minority ethnic population is more likely to use Facebook, WhatsApp, and other social media than mainstream news.
As a result, Acre Lane resident Jane Harrington, 43, an advertising producer, is not surprised by her road’s high virus and low vaccination rates.
She’s had her booster and initial vaccinations.
She said: ‘We’re close to London’s city centre here, people are travelling on public transport, and there’s lots of pubs and restaurants, so you’d expect a high virus rate.
‘But I’ve seen the vaccine hesitancy – people are genuinely scared.
‘I’ve met a lot of Spanish people, quite a big community here, who’ve heard stories from Spain about people dying of the vaccine. While the NHS has done an amazing educational job, it’s not always meeting the right ears.
‘Maybe they need to use different languages, and go into different community centres.’
Athene, a 24-year-old Oxford graduate, also lives on Acre Lane since she started her work as an events coordinator.
Jane Harrington (left), and Athene Madison (right), both reside in Acrelane and had their vaccination doses.
She is one of many young professionals here who over the last few decades have helped push the price for a two-bed flat up to £600,000, and for a house to well over a million. Miss Madden was double vaccinated and received her booster on Tuesday.
‘My friend works for a homeless charity here,’ she said. ‘She says the homeless have been completely abandoned – they’re not being targeted enough for vaccination.’
It is complex topic. In a paper published this year by the BMJ, they argued that trust in certain areas of the public healthcare system has been undermined by systemic racism and discrimination as well as previous unethical research into black patients, under-representation in vaccine research, poor experiences in culturally insensitive healthcare systems, and other factors.
Another local who has had his share of problems is ‘unemployed academic’ Godfrey, 51. ‘I believe in western medicine, I did my science O-levels 36 years ago – but a lot of people don’t trust it.’
A passing Spaniard overhears and sums up the prevailing air of scepticism here: ‘They’ve told us to take three vaccines already – if you take four, are you immortal?’
Those worried about the high infection rate on Acre Lane might answer that getting another jab might not give eternal life – but it could at least help prevent premature death.