Racial gap in vaccination drive widens
Lack of access, deep mistrust exacerbate growing disparity
A racial gap has opened up in the nation’s COVID -19 vaccination drive, with Black Americans in many places lagging behind whites in receiving shots, an Associated Press analysis shows.
An early look at the 17 states and two cities that have released racial breakdowns through Jan. 25 found that Black people in all places are getting inoculated at levels below their share of the general population, in some cases significantly below.
That is true even though they constitute an oversize percentage of the nation’s health care workers, who were put at the front of the line for shots when the campaign began in middecember.
For example, in North Carolina, Black people make up 22 percent of the population and 26 percent of the health care workforce but only 11 percent of the vaccine recipients so far. White people, a category in which the state includes both Hispanic and non-hispanic whites, are 68 percent of the population and 82 percent of those vaccinated.
The gap is deeply troubling to some, given that the coronavirus has taken a disproportionate toll in severe sickness and death on Black people in the U.S., where the scourge has killed more than 430,000 Americans. Black, Hispanic and Native American people are dying from COVID -19 at almost three times the rate of white people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We’re going to see a widening and exacerbation of the racial health inequities that were here before the pandemic and worsened during the pandemic if our communities cannot access the vaccine,” said Dr. Uche Blackstock, a New York emergency physician and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, an advocacy group that addresses bias and inequality.
Experts say several factors could be driving the emerging disparity, including deep distrust of the medical establishment among Black Americans
because of a history of discriminatory treatment; inadequate access to the vaccine in Black neighborhoods; and a digital divide that can make it difficult to get crucial information. Vaccination sign-ups are being done to a large degree online.
“It’s frustrating and challenging,” said Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who runs Tennessee’s vaccination program, which is doubling the doses sent to some hard-hit rural counties but is meeting with deep-rooted mistrust among some Black Tennesseans.
“We have to be working very hard to rebuild that trust and get these folks vaccinated,” Fiscus said. “They’re dying. They’re being hospitalized.”
Hispanic people also lagged behind in vaccinations, but their levels were somewhat closer to expectations in most places studied. Hispanics on average are younger than other Americans,
and vaccinations have yet to be thrown open to young people.
However, several states where Hispanic communities were hit particularly hard by COVID -19 have yet to report data, notably California and New York.
President Joe Biden is trying to bring more equity to the vaccine rollout he inherited from the Trump administration. The Biden administration is encouraging states to map and target vulnerable neighborhoods using such tools as the CDC’S social vulnerability index, which incorporates data on race, poverty, crowded housing and other factors.
“We are going to take extra steps to get to the people hardest to reach, and that work is happening right now,” said Dr. Marcella Nunez-smith, the chair of Biden’s COVID -19 equity task force.
Most states have yet to release any racial data on who has been vaccinated. Even in the states that provided breakdowns, the data is often incomplete, with many records missing details on race. However, the missing information would not be enough to change the general picture in most cases.
The data came from Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia, plus two cities, Philadelphia and Chicago.
The AP analysis found that whites are getting vaccinated at closer to or higher than expected levels in most of the states examined.
In the past two weeks, many states opened eligibility to a wider group of older people and more front-line workers, which could further depress the relative share of Black people getting vaccinated.
Among the findings: In Maryland, Black people make up 30 percent of the population and 40 percent of the health care industry yet account for just 16 percent of the people vaccinated so far. Whites, which in the state’s data includes Hispanic and non-hispanics, constitute 55 percent of the population and 67 percent of those who have gotten shots. Hispanics of any race are 11 percent of the population and 5 percent of the vaccine recipients.
In Philadelphia, Black people are 40 percent of the population but just 14 percent of the people vaccinated so far. Hispanics are 15 percent of the population and 4 percent of the vaccine recipients.
In Chicago, Black people make up 30 percent of the population but only 15 percent of those vaccinated. With Hispanics, the numbers are 29 percent versus 17 percent.
The vaccine drive has been slower and more problemplagued than expected. Many Americans of all races have had trouble getting shots because the supply is limited. Overall, 7 percent of Americans have received at least one dose. But there are other problems slowing vaccination among Black Americans and other groups, experts said.
Some Black neighborhoods have no one to give shots.
“What we’ve heard over and over again: A lot of Black folks want to get it from their doctor or from their local clinic because that’s where the trust is,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s health officer.
Louisiana is using the CDC tool to locate vulnerable neighborhoods without vaccination sites, then recruiting new vaccinators in those neighborhoods, said Dr. Joseph Kanter, state health officer.
Many Black Americans are taking steps to make sure their communities receive the vaccine, including Detroit health care worker Sameerah Singletary.
More than 1,700 residents of the nation’s largest Black-majority city have died of the virus, including some of Singletary’s friends and her godmother. Yet she knows many who are refusing the vaccine.
“I think there is such a collective trauma in Black people, even in Detroit, that many people don’t have nothing left,” Singletary said. “They’ve been traumatized so much that they don’t care because the virus was just another layer on top.”
But she added: “I feel like we have to participate in our healing.”
We’re going to see a widening and exacerbation of the racial health inequities that were here before the pandemic and worsened during the pandemic if our communities cannot access the vaccine.” — Dr. Uche Blackstock, a New York emergency physician and CEO of Advancing Health Equity