Black Americans receive Covid vaccinations at dramatically lower prices than white Americans in the first weeks of the chaotic deployment, according to a new analysis from Kaiser Health News.
About 3 percent of Americans have so far received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine. But in 16 countries that reported by race, white residents are vaccinated according to the analysis at significantly higher rates than black residents – in many cases two to three times higher.
In the most dramatic case, 1.2 percent of white Pennsylvania residents were vaccinated on Jan. 14, compared to 0.3 percent of Black Pennsylvania residents.
The vast majority of the initial vaccination rounds went to health care workers and staff members in the front lines of the pandemic – a workforce that usually consists of different races, consisting of doctors, hospitals, nurses and staff members in the home.
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If people of all races were to achieve the same amount, the shares of people vaccinated of whom the breed is known should loosely join the demographics of health workers. But in every state, black Americans have been significantly under-represented among people who have been vaccinated so far.
Access issues and mistrust rooted in structural racism appear to be the main factors leaving black health workers behind in their quest to vaccinate the country. The unbalanced survey below that looks like a relatively easy vaccination staff member does not bode well for the rest of the dispersed population in the country.
Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans die from Covid nearly three times more than white Americans, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Non-Spanish health workers in black and Asian countries are likely to contract Covid and die from it as white workers. (Hispanics can be of any race.)
“My concern now is that if we do not vaccinate the population with the greatest risk, we will see even more excessive deaths in black and colored communities,” said Dr. Fola May, a UCLA doctor and researcher on health equity, said. “It breaks my heart.”
Dr. Taison Bell, a University of Virginia health system doctor who serves on the vaccination committee, stressed that the hesitation among some blacks about vaccination is not monolithic. Nurses he spoke to were worried it could damage their fertility, while a black co-worker asked him about the safety of the Moderna vaccine, as it was the company’s first product on the market. Some drove conspiracy theories, while other black collaborators just wanted to talk to someone like Bell, who is also black.
But access issues persist, even in hospital systems. Bell was horrified to discover that members of the environmental services – the domestic staff – did not have access to e-mail in the hospital. The information on the registration of vaccine sent to the hospital staff could not reach them.
“This is what structural racism looks like,” he said. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said. “These groups were seen and not heard – no one thought about it.”
Eric Swenson, spokesman for UVA Health, said some of the porter staff were among the first to get vaccinated and officials took additional steps to reach those who were not usually by email. He said more than 50 percent of the environmental services team had been vaccinated so far.
A failure of federal response
As the public health commissioner of Columbus, Ohio and a black doctor, dr. Mysheika Roberts a test for any new doctor she sees for care: she does not want to tell them that she is a doctor. Then she or she sees being treated or treated with dignity.
It is the degree of mistrust she says public health officials must overcome to vaccinate black Americans – one that is rooted in generations of abuse and the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study and Henrietta Lacks’ experience.
A well-known black religious group, the Nation of Islam, for example, is urging its members via their website not to be vaccinated because of what Minister Louis Farrakhan calls the “treacherous history of experimentation”. The group, classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, is known for spreading conspiracy theories.
Public health messages have stopped the spread of misinformation about the vaccine on social media. The choice of the name for the development of vaccines, “Operation Warp Speed”, did not help; it made many feel that it was all done too quickly.
Benjamin noted that although the nonprofit Ad Council raised more than $ 37 million for a marketing flash to encourage Americans to be vaccinated, a Department of Health and Human Services government advertising campaign never materialized. after being declared too political during an election year.
“We were late to start the planning process,” Benjamin said. “We should have started it in April and May.”
And experts are clear: it should not just be ads from famous athletes or celebrities who get the chance.
“We need to dig deep, go the old-fashioned way with handouts, with neighbors talking to neighbors, with pastors talking to their congregation members,” Roberts said.
Speed versus equity
The Mississippi State Health Officer, dr. Thomas Dobbs, said the move announced by the Trump administration on Tuesday to reward states that are rapidly distributing vaccines with more shots makes the rollout a “Darwinist process.”
Dobbs is concerned that black populations that need more time for outreach are lagging behind. Only 18 percent of those vaccinated so far in Mississippi are black, in a state of 38 percent black.
It may be faster to administer 100 vaccinations at a transit point than at a rural clinic, but it does not ensure fair access, Dobbs said.
“Those with time, computer systems and transportation are going to get more vaccinations than other people – that’s just the reality of it,” Dobbs said.
In Washington, DC, a digital divide is already evident, said dr. Jessica Boyd, the chief medical officer of Unity Health Care, which manages several community health centers, said. After the city had vaccinations for 65-year-olds and older, the slots were gone within a day. And Boyd’s staff could not get patients into the system so quickly. Most of the patients do not have easy access to the internet or need technical assistance.
“If we are going to resolve the issues of inequality, we need to think differently,” Boyd said.
Dr Marcus Plescia, medical chief of the Association of Civil Servants and Public Health Officials, said the limited amount of vaccine should also be considered.
“We miss the boat on equity,” he said. “If we do not step back and address it, it will get worse.”
While Plescia is encouraged by the election of President Joe Biden to increase the rollout rate by promising to administer 100 million doses in 100 days, he is concerned that the government could fall into the same trap in Biden.
And the lack of public data makes it difficult to spot such racial inequalities in real time. Fifteen states provided race information publicly, Missouri did so on request and eight other states refused or did not respond. Several do not report vaccination numbers separately for Native Americans and other groups, and some lack racial data for many of those vaccinated. The CDC plans to add race and ethnicity data to its public dashboard, but CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said it could not provide a timeline for when.
Historical hesitation
A third of black adults in the U.S. said they have no plans to be vaccinated, citing the novelty of the vaccine and fears about safety as the best deterrent, according to a KFF poll in December. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.) Half of them said they were worried about getting Covid out of the vaccine itself, which is not possible.
Experts believe that this kind of misinformation is a growing problem. Inaccurate conspiracy theories that the vaccines contain government detection chips have gained ground on social media.
Just over half of black Americans planning to get the vaccine said they would wait to see how well it works in others before getting it themselves, compared to 36 percent of white Americans. This hesitation can even be found in the healthcare staff.
“We should not make the assumption that just because someone works in health care, they will somehow have better information or better understanding,” Bell said.
In Colorado, black employees at Centura Health were 44 percent less likely to get the vaccine than their white counterparts. Latino workers were 22 percent less likely. The hospital system of more than 21,000 workers is compiling messages to close the gap.
“To reach the people we really want to reach, we have to do things differently, we can not just offer the vaccine,” said Dr. Ozzie Grenardo, a senior vice president and head of diversity and inclusion at Centura, said. “We need to go deeper and give more depth to the resources and who is conveying the message.”
It takes time and personal commitments. It takes people of all ethnicities within those communities, like Willy Nuyens.
Nuyens, who identifies himself as Spanish, has been working for the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center for 33 years. He is now working on the staff of the environmental services and is now cleaning the rooms of Covid patients. (KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
In Los Angeles County, 92 percent of health workers and first responders who died from Covid were not white. Nuyens has seen too many of his co-workers lose family to the disease. He got the chance to get the vaccine, but was surprised to hear that only 20 percent of his 315 people do the same.
So he went to work convincing his co-workers and reassuring them that the vaccine would protect them and their families and not kill them.
“I hire two employees, encourage them and ask them to encourage each one,” he said.
So far, the survey in his department has more than doubled to 45 percent. He hopes it will soon be more than 70 percent.
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