Can Switzerland convince its people to take the Covid-19 vaccine?

A stickler for detail, Geraldine first arrived at swissinfo.ch in 2014 to study rumours on social media as part of a collaborative research project known as Pheme. She now coordinates the Fact Checks by swissinfo.ch dossier covering (mis)statements about Switzerland, and continues to follow the trail of online misinformation.

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In the middle of a brutal second wave of the coronavirus that saw new daily cases hit an all-time high this autumn, a nationwide survey asked: would you get vaccinated against Covid-19?

More than a quarter of people (28%) said they would not. Nearly half (47%) were hesitant, saying they would get it only if there were no side effects, or that they would 'wait and see'.

According to a large-scale study on vaccine confidence in 149 countries published in The Lancet in September 2020 and reported by Swiss public radio RTS, in recent years the Swiss have grown more hesitant about vaccines. The percentage of people who believe that vaccines are important declined between 2015 and 2019 (from 65% to 53%). Fewer people also believe that they are effective (from 50% in 2015 to 45% in 2019). Only confidence in vaccine safety increased in this period (from 30% to 33%).

The study draws in part on a 2018 study by the Wellcome Trust , which placed Switzerland among the top five countries in the world for vaccine scepticism. Some 22% of Swiss disagreed that vaccines are safe, the highest percentage in Europe after France; 9% disagreed that vaccines are important for children to have.

A poll conducted in 27 countries for the World Economic Forum this summer found that three-quarters of adults strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement, 'If a vaccine for Covid-19 were available, I would get it'. In France, the rate was 59% and in Germany it was 67%. In Switzerland, which was not included in the WEF survey, only 16% of people polled in October-November by the SBC said they would immediately get the vaccine when it becomes available.

The survey of 40,000 people by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), the parent company of SWI swissinfo.ch, confirmed trends seen in previous studies showing a high degree of vaccine scepticism among the population. Internationally, the Swiss register among the lowest levels of vaccine confidence. The global pandemic, with its potent mix of uncertainty and widespread misinformation , has done nothing to quell this hesitancy.

With the roll-out of an effective Covid vaccine still months away, there is time for authorities to plan information campaigns. But there are speedbumps ahead, starting with savvy anti-vaccination advocates on social media whose rhetoric observers say risks infecting the undecided.

To understand the scale of the online anti-vaccination movement, the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) did an audit. It identified over 400 English-language anti-vaccination accounts on social media with 58 million followers, pushing false or misleading claims about the importance or safety of vaccines.

'Covid has been a growth opportunity for anti-vaxxers,' it states in an analysis , which reveals the most popular accounts have experienced a 19% growth in follower numbers since 2019.

For Pascal Wagner-Egger, a social psychology researcher at the University of Fribourg, this is not surprising.

'We know that in times of anxiety, there is an increase in unverified rumours and suspicions,' he said. A pandemic that lasts months, if not years, offers even greater scope for misinformation to spread and linger online.

In a sign that the anti-vaccination movement is using the pandemic to advance its political agenda, there are currently efforts to launch a people's initiative to prevent compulsory vaccination in Switzerland. Critics say this is scaremongering. Currently no such obligation exists and getting vaccinated remains an individual choice. Switzerland's approach is unique in that voters overwhelmingly rejected a law on epidemics that would have made vaccination against smallpox compulsory back in 1882, as historian Laurent Henri-Vignaud pointed out in an interview on Swiss public radio, RTS.

'The debate in Switzerland is democratic, but we still see a contradiction with vaccination policy, which comes from the top down – and it can't be otherwise, since the issue is of public interest,' he said.

Although the current Epidemics Act allows authorities to make a vaccine compulsory for certain risk groups, such as care home staff, this measure is possible only if no other option exists for getting a disease under control and would not lead to penalties for someone refusing the vaccine.

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