VAXXING PROBLEM
Sharp racial divides in rates stir angst over school reopen
Glaring disparities by race and borough in COVID-19 vaccination rates for city adolescents trouble health care experts and officials ahead of the return to in-person classes Monday.
Vaccination rates for city adolescents continue ticking up. Overall, roughly 65% of city 13-to17-year-olds have received at least one shot, compared with 79% of adults.
But the variations across racial groups and geography are stark. City officials report that 100% of Asian adolescents have gotten at least one jab, while the rates for both white and Black teens hover near 40%. Statistics show 63% of Hispanic teens have gotten at least one shot.
The vaccination rates for Black and Hispanic adolescents are within 6 percentage points of their adult counterparts. White teens are 11 percentage points below white adults in vaccine coverage while Asian teens are 20 percentage points higher than Asian adults.
Medical experts say the complex historical, political and sociological divides that drove differing vaccination rates among adults could be even more pronounced when it comes to young people.
“I think in many, many ways there are communities that still believe in science and trust their physicians and the messages they’re given, and there are other groups that, based on their history of implicit bias and racism, their experiences with health care are unfortunately negative,” said Warren Siegel, chairman of pediatrics at Coney Island Hospital and chairman of the New York chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Siegel said that in his experience talking with families of adolescents mulling COVID vaccines, the fears or hopes that parents bring to the vaccines are magnified when it comes to their kids. He’s encountered families where one or both parents who are vaccinated themselves worry about giving the shots to their kids.
Being protective is “part of being a parent ... that’s completely understandable and normal,” he said. But that parental caution makes it even more important for pediatricians and health care workers to take the time to talk through families’ fears and explain the vaccines are safe and effective for young people, he said.
Youth vaccination rates will take on added significance when city public schools restart full in-person classes Monday.
Students who have gotten two anti-COVID shots and don’t show any virus symptoms do not have to quarantine at home after exposure to COVID-19 in school, while unvaccinated teens are required to quarantine for up to 10 days, missing out on in-person academics and socializing.
City officials stopped short of requiring the jabs for all students eligible to receive them, but mandated vaccines for teens playing high-risk sports and participating in after-school activities like chorus that may put them at risk.
Siegel said those requirements can offer powerful incentives for teens, like one of his recent unvaccinated teenage patients who wanted to play in an international soccer tournament.
Siegel informed him he’d have to get vaccinated to travel abroad, and the boy said, “If I need this to do what I want to do, I’ll do it,” he recalled.
The disparities are stark not just between racial groups, but across boroughs.
In Manhattan, 80% of white teenagers are vaccinated, while just 26% of white teens in Brooklyn have received at least one dose.
Just one-third of white teenagers on Staten Island are inoculated.
Siegel said vaccine hesitancy or resistance is still widespread in some Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn. Neighborhoods including Borough Park and Midwood that have large Orthodox Jewish populations have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the city.
Miriam Knoll, a physician and president of the Jewish Orthodox Women’s Medical Association, a group that’s worked with Orthodox communities to address the toll of COVID-19, said many residents of Orthodox communities in Brooklyn were already infected and believe they don’t need the vaccine. She added that a “vocal minority” of hard-line anti-vaxxers has targeted some Jewish communities in Brooklyn.
Vaccination rates for Black teens average 38% citywide, and hover near 40% across all five boroughs.
“Legacies — and contemporary experiences — with racism in medicine and government impact confidence in the vaccine,” said Simbo Ige, an assistant city health assistant commissioner who works on health equity issues.
LaToya Beecham, a high school senior in the Bronx, got her first jab just after her 18th birthday, but first had to wade through social media misinformation and discouraging messages from peers.
“Since it first came out, there have been a lot of things people have been saying, especially on TikTok, like growing another leg. They’re always so dramatic,” she said.
Siegel said he’s optimistic that teens who have grown up navigating the pitfalls of the internet may be sharper than adults at spotting and seeing through online vaccine misinformation.
“My patients, when they see something online, they seem to know that this is questionable,” he said.