Denmark trial uses virtual reality game to boost COVID vaccinations

[June 10, 2021]    By Tim Barsoe
 
 COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Denmark researchers are using virtual reality to encourage more COVID-19 vaccinations, through a game of maneuvering through a virus-infected crowd in a city square.

Participants Adam and Rebecca take part in an experiment, where researchers try to use virtual reality goggles to teach people about how virus infections spread, conducted in a park, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Copenhagen, Denmark, June 6, 2021. Picture taken June 6, 2021. REUTERS/Tim Barsoe

In an experiment by the University of Copenhagen, participants wear goggles to play an elderly person crossing the square while avoiding red-clothed bypassers infected with COVID-19. Vaccinated characters dress in blue.

"It was fun, definitely. It felt like you were there," said Adam, a participant who got infected in the game he played in a Copenhagen park.

Adam already had decided to get a COVID-19 shot before this, he said.

"We know from similar studies that after people went through a virtual reality experience like this, their vaccination intention increases. We have observed this with COVID already," said Robert Bohm, professor of psychology at the University of Copenhagen, citing a prior online study by the researchers.

The idea can be used at doctor's offices, he suggested.

The World Health Organisation estimates that immunisation prevents 4 million to 5 million deaths every year.

In February-March, more than a quarter of European Union adults said they would refuse a COVID-19 shot, a survey by the EU agency Eurofound showed.

(Reporting by Tim Barsoe; Editing by Richard Chang)

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