S.F. areas hit hardest offer hope in vaccines
City could be U.S. model in combating inequities
Katia Ramos stood on the corner of Florida and 24th streets in the Mission last weekend with an exciting message for those passing by: “We have vaccine appointments! Does anyone need one?”
But what she and a dozen other volunteers from Unidos en Salud — United in Health — kept hearing on that sunny Saturday afternoon was, in many ways, even more exciting: “I already got it.”
The volunteers fanned out through the heavily Latino district to spread the word that anyone older than 16 would soon be eligible for a vaccine. Their goal? Secure appointments for as many people as possible before eligibility expanded this week.
With about half of the Mission District already vaccinated, the group quickly realized that many in the neighborhood were ahead of them. If the city continues focusing on its most vulnerable, Ramos said, San Francisco could turn out to be a
small bright spot in a nationwide vaccine rollout that has been criticized as inequitable.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” said Ramos, a senior executive at the Latino Community Foundation.
San Francisco’s push to vaccinate the hardesthit communities against COVID1¥ appears to be making progress: On average, neighborhoods with higher rates of coronavirus cases, such as the Mission, Bayview and the xcelsior, show vaccination rates that are either on par with or slightly higher than the overall city average, according to an analysis of city data by The Chronicle.
As of Sunday, coronavirus infections had been confirmed in almost ؽ of Mission residents since the start of the pandemic, which compares with a citywide case rate of about 4½. Half of all neighborhood residents had received at least one vaccine shot, which is similar to the ~0½ vaccination rate among all city residents.
In the xcelsior, which has a case rate similar to the Mission’s, ~6½ of the population has been vaccinated. BayviewHunters .oint, with about 1 in 10 residents known to have been infected, has a ~4½ vaccination rate.
By contrast, an analysis of neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles shows that higher infection rates in a neighborhood are associated with lower vaccination rates.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and .revention ranked California among the worst states for distributing shots to the communities with the worst infection rates last month. To change course, ov.
avin Newsom directed 40½ of the vaccine supply to the state’s lowestincome @I. codes.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study additionally found that, unlike San Francisco’s vulnerable neighborhoods, counties with high coronavirus rates often have lower vaccination rates than those with lower infection rates. The study found that counties with higher shares of Black and Latino residents had lower vaccination rates.
But despite San Francisco’s progress — nearly 60½ of residents 16 and older had been vaccinated by Wednesday — challenges still loom.
The city experienced a tighter vaccine supply this week, even before the city expanded eligibility on Tuesday and suspended the use of the ohnson I ohnson vaccine over concerns about a side effect in a handful of cases in the United States.
xperts also worry that those who are techsavvier — and have more time on their hands to wait in line or look for an appointment — may have a better chance at snagging the city’s limited slots. And even when everyone who wants a shot can easily get one, it’s unclear how many people will refuse vaccination.
“We are pretty amazed at how many people are willing to take the vaccine× it has not been a struggle,” said Valerie TulierLaiwa, a volunteer for the Latino Task Force, a community group. But she thinks they will start to “exhaust that population” in maybe a month or so.
The approximately ~00 people who signed up for an appointment over the weekend through volunteers from Unidos en Salud — a partnership with the city’s Latino Task Force and UCSF — dwarfed the handful who did not want a shot.
TulierLaiwa said outreach workers are sometimes even able to change reluctant minds by answering basic questions, like if the vaccine is safe and what kind of side effects people may get. The key, she said, is having community members directly talk with people about their concerns, rather than relying on billboards and TV ads.
“It has to be intimate,” she said. “.eople have very specific questions that they can’t respond to if it’s just a oneway conversation, like if it’s a billboard talking to them.”
Megan Morris, an associate professor of infectious disease epidemiology at UCSF, said community outreach — like that of Unidos en Salud — has likely directly impacted vaccination rates in lowerincome communities, and should continue. Community sites, like one that officials planned to announce at 18th and Shotwell streets on Thursday, are also key to reaching people in the neighborhood, she said.
“San Francisco is a rich city, and people are very techsavvy,” she said. “So if we’re relying on that platform as a primary avenue for people to access vaccines, that’s only going to exacerbate the differences we’re seeing with access.”
Unidos en Salud has been conducting its outreach since the beginning of the pandemic, starting with testing at BART’s 24th Street Mission Station.
Over the past few months, the organization has been going door to door in the neighborhood, looking for eligible people every time the vaccine eligibility requirements changed.
Volunteers sometimes have walked people to the vaccination site at 24th and Mission whether an appointment was immediately available. Volunteer Nicole Bermingham said she felt like Santa Claus over the weekend as she offered appointments to dozens of people in the Mission.
ven though the majority of people she stopped said they’d already gotten their shots, she signed up several people for an appointment this week — including a street vendor’s son, a family who was eating lunch in a parklet and several homeless people near San Francisco eneral Hospital.
“We’re delivering good news,” she said. “It is really heartening that so many people have already had it.”
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