A mosque in Birmingham is the first in the UK to open as a Covid-19 vaccination centre.
The Al-Abbas Islamic Centre in Balsall Heath, Birmingham is expected to vaccinate up to 500 people a day. According to NHS England the mosque in Birmingham and Odeon cinema in Aylesbury are among the latest sites to become vaccination centres as the government continues its vaccination program. This inauguration is seen crucial especially at a time when misinformation around the vaccine is rampant across social media and Imams believe that it will help dispel the myth that the vaccine was forbidden in Islamic law.
In a statement to the BBC, Dr Rizwan Alidina, a trustee of the mosque and member of the Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group said, "The significance of the venue is obviously quite evident with particularly the Muslim community being one of the communities with a bit of a lower uptake than we would otherwise have expected." He said there had been a good response to the opening of the centre at the mosque and hoped it would soon be carrying out between 300 and 500 vaccinations a day.
One of the first people to get the jab at the Birmingham mosque, retired GP Dr Masud Ahmad, said his message to others in the local community was "that it's quite safe to have it and they should have it".
HS England regional medical director for London Dr Vin Diwakar told a Downing Street press conference some communities had "legitimate and understandable concerns about the vaccines".
He said despite it being a "safe and effective vaccine", for some Asian and black communities there were "longstanding concerns" that "go back generations".
Dr Diwakar said some people were "told by their grandparents that experiments were done in the early part of the last century, that unethical experiments were done way back in the 60s".
