As a worker at a hospice in the English city of Birmingham, Shinas Saajan was among the

first group of people in the UK eligible for our COVID-19 vaccine, which began rolling

out in December.

And they asked me, oh, Shinas, you're going to have it in a straight away.

I just jumped and said, no, of course not.

I'm not having it.

Saajan had been inundated with disinformation and false claims about the vaccines.

Some of the claims seemed specifically designed to scare off Muslims like her, like one about

vaccines being made with pork product, which they are not.

If you have these messages bombarded at you, you know, from morning till night, somewhere,

you know, along the line, you're just thinking, maybe they are right.

But despite a flood of disinformation, Saajan recently joined at least several million

other Britons who public opinion polls reveal have changed their minds about getting a COVID-19

vaccine.

In Saajan's case, that change came after leaders at her mosque reached out to Britain's

National Health Service to turn the site into a vaccination center, and her EMAM made

a personal show of getting the shot.

I think the EMAM plays a very important role.

We've seen three or four times a week.

We have a lot of trust in him.

And the fact that now that the mosque has made itself a hub for the vaccination, I think

it's really, really incredible.

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