Wellcome Partners With Domino YouTube Star To Help Topple COVID-19

LONDON, May 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Global charitable foundation Wellcome, alongside partners UNICEF and GAVI, has joined forces with US domino YouTube influencer, Lily Hevesh (@Hevesh5) to create a piece of domino art to support the ongoing call for fairer distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

The 90 second video includes three spirals made up of 7,500 dominoes and took six days to plan, create and film. It has been launched to the YouTube star's 3.2m subscribers today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugbX9uF6-x0.

The creative artwork uses dominoes to visualise the role vaccines play in combating the virus and why equitable global access is needed to end the pandemic. It features several patterns toppling to represent transmission of the virus and fixed 'vaccinated' dominoes are introduced into the work, helping to break the chains of infection and reducing the spread of the virus ? or in this case, leading to fewer dominoes falling over. The artwork shows the impact that variants can have if the virus is left to develop in parts of the world unable to access vaccines, reinforcing the message that every country is vulnerable if even a few are left behind or left out of access to life saving vaccines.

In the past Lily has created domino videos for the likes of Google and The Late Show with James Corden. Her videos have racked up over one billion views on social media.

Anna Mouser, Wellcome policy and advocacy lead for vaccines, says, "We're committed to finding new ways to communicate just how critical it is that we have equitable access to vaccines for all countries. We are calling on global leaders, particularly the G7, to immediately commit to sharing vaccine doses through COVAX and provide continued financial support for initiatives."

Lily Hevesh comments, "The public has had to absorb lots of new information about vaccines for over a year now, so it's really important to find different and creative ways to communicate what are still really important messages. Sometimes we have to entertain in order to educate, so I hope my film manages to do just that."

A toolkit featuring quick and simple information, covering key aspects of the COVID-19 vaccines can be found here: http://wellcome.org/covid-19vaccines.

The hub is also available in German: https://wellcome.org/covid-19impfstoffe.

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