Oscar-winning actor Benicio Del Toro lost his uncle to Covid-19 exactly a year ago and his brother, the chief medical officer of a New York City hospital, contracted the virus while in the front line of the fight against the pandemic. .
“As a result, I was, almost play-by-play, thoroughly informed about the incredible challenges the frontline and health workers had to face in 2020,” Del Toro said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
But he saw “a light at the end of the tunnel” in December when the Covid-19 vaccine was launched across the country. A few weeks later, his brother Del Toro opened up about his concerns about low vaccination rates in Latino communities.
“When I asked him why, he said one of the reasons was a lack of truthful information and a lack of outreach,” Del Toro said. It was then that the Puerto Rican actor decided to team up with actor Zoe Saldana to create a bilingual campaign to combat the misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine in an effort to encourage more Latinos to be vaccinated.
As the country prepares to meet President Joe Biden’s latest goal of giving 200 million shots in its first hundred days in office, campaigns such as those created by Del Toro bring a new sense of urgency as all Americans of 16 years and older are now eligible to receive vaccinations.
The video campaign features Dr. Gustavo del Toro, chief medical officer at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, answering questions from his brother and Saldana to clear up some of the most common misconceptions about Covid-19 vaccines in Latino communities and beyond.
The exorbitant pace at which Latinos and other color communities have rallied and died from Covid-19 over the past year has led public health officials to push for a fair distribution of vaccines.
As of April 20, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that race and ethnicity were known to only 55 percent of people who received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccination. Among this group, nearly two-thirds are white (64 percent), 12 percent Spanish, 9 percent black, and 6 percent Asian.
Covid-19 has killed at least 69,199 Latinos since the start of the pandemic. According to the CDC, most of them are at much younger ages and almost three times stronger than those of the white population in the country.
The peer-reviewed study, published in February, found that the incredible loss of young lives in Latino, especially that of people in their thirties and forties, led to a decrease in Latino’s overall life expectancy, which is more than the reduction among white people. the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Of all the people who received the vaccine in the trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, not one person died from Covid-19 infection. In my mind, the end result is: they are equal,” said Dr. Gustavo Del. Toro said when his brother and Saldana asked which Covid-19 vaccine was better.
The videos featuring Del Toro and Saldana will be distributed using the Momento Latino advocacy group and the SOMOS Community Care networks, which provide health services in New York.
“It’s great that we can work with them because they can really help bring the word out to our Latinx communities and anyone who wants to listen,” Del Toro said. “Our intention is not to tell people what to do. We just want to bring out the information about the vaccinations and then people decide for themselves.”
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