Twitter has announced a new push to help maximize COVID-19 vaccine take-up, with a new set of in-feed notifications set to go out to all users from this week.

As explained by Twitter:

"As COVID-19 vaccinations become more widely available, we want you to have access to the latest vaccine info in your country. This week you’ll see a prompt in your timeline that links to sources about vaccine safety, efficacy, and news from public health experts."

Here's an example of one of the new, top of feed prompts from Australia:

As you can see, the new prompts link to authoritative resources on COVID-19, including Twitter's COVID-19 Information Center, in order to help users get a better understanding of where they can get a vaccine, along with information on how the vaccine is made, health updates, WHO advice, and more.

Like all social networks, Twitter has been working to help maximize vaccine take-up in various ways, including promoted links to official information, and an expanded push to stop the spread of vaccine misinformation through tweets.

The latter efforts could play a key role in reducing vaccine resistance, which health authorities have flagged as a major concern in moving beyond the pandemic.

Facebook, too, is working to promote vaccine awareness through visual prompts and sharing tools, in a bid to counter underlying concerns, which have largely gained traction through sharing on social networks.

Definitely, these new, official prompts and links can help in this, but the push to remove misinformation, and to reduce concerns around potential side effects, given the very low rate of issues, is likely the most important step, and it's good to see Twitter joining the effort to help maximize vaccine take-up, as we look forward to a post-pandemic future.  

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Andrew Hutchinson

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