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Celebrities including comedians Romesh Ranganathan and Meera Syal and cricketer Moeen Ali have made a video urging people to get the Covid vaccine.

The video was co-ordinated by Citizen Khan creator Adil Ray, who said he wanted to dispel vaccination myths for those from ethnic minority communities.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and former Conservative Party Chairman Baroness Warsi are among the others taking part.
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“We all just feel we needed to do something,” Ray told the BBC.

Fake news about the vaccine, particularly in the South Asian community, has led to concerns about uptake.
Ray appears in the five-minute video alongside stars like former Coronation Street actress Shobna Gulati, who tells viewers: “We will find our way through this. And we will be united once again with our friends and our families. All we have to do is take the vaccination.”

Somali-born British journalist Rageh Omaar and his ITV colleague Ranvir Singh join comedians like Sanjeev Bhaskar, Asim Chaudhry and Ranganathan to debunk common vaccine misinformation and misconceptions.

Ranganathan says: “There’s no chip or tracker in the vaccine to keep watching where you go. Your mobile phone actually does a much better job of that.”

After posting the video, Ray told BBC Radio Leicester: “For the British Asian and black communities, at the very beginning of the pandemic we were told they were perhaps the most vulnerable, that there was a disproportionate number of cases and even deaths.

“Even now there are a disproportionate number of deaths. But nothing was really done about it and that was really quite confusing for a lot of the community. So we felt that we’ve got to try and take the lead a little bit here and dispel some of these myths.”

He added: “This was recorded entirely independently from the government – the only thing we did do was we went to the NHS website for the correct medical guidance.”

With the UK aiming to offer Covid vaccinations to every adult by autumn, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said confidence in the vaccines was high in the UK, with 85% saying they would accept the jab.

But he said that those who were hesitant “skew heavily” towards black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

The UK is recording the ethnicity and occupations of people who receive the vaccine and figures would be published soon, Mr Zahawi added. -bbcworld