Government Gavin Newsom on Sunday acknowledged that state and local health officials had stumbled to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine fairly among Latino and Black communities in California.
Newsom said in a mobile vaccination clinic in Inglewood that the state ‘needs to do more and do better’ to provide outreach and vaccination in the communities hardest hit by the virus.
“We are not doing enough. We need to do significantly more programs like this, ”he said. “We need to get people back to work. We need to get people back into the church. And we need to get people back to school. ”
Of the 7.3 million doses administered in California, 2.9% went to black residents, 16% to Latinos and 13% to Asian Americans, compared to 32.7% to white people, according to state data.
These differences are reflected to some extent in LA County, where 24% of black residents aged 65 and older received at least one dose of the vaccine, with Latino seniors at 29% and Asian American seniors at 39%, compared with 43% among white people. elderly, according to the public health data of the country.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 mortality rate for Latinos is three times that of white people in the province, with a daily rate of 48 deaths per 100,000 population, compared to 16 deaths per 100,000 population for white people, according to provincial data from mid-January. Black residents die at 23 deaths per 100,000 people.
Newsom, which faces a nearly 1.1 million signatures campaign, sought to illustrate the state’s efforts to vaccinate “hard-to-reach” and “excessively affected” communities by visiting two sites on Sunday, including one in Inglewood and another in Boyle Heights.
“We recognize our responsibility to do more,” he said, commenting on a series of initiatives involving his office across the country. “We focus on farm workers. We are in Coachella Valley on a partnership agreement that focuses on farm workers and pop-up sites, in partnership with farms and with farm managers. ”
LA’s Eastside, which is predominantly Latino, has suffered the highest number of coronavirus infections in the country. Inglewood also saw a high percentage among the majority Latino and Black population, with 1 in 9 residents becoming infected, according to public health data.
Only about 250 people would be vaccinated Sunday at each of the mobile clinics Newsom visited, located at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood and Ramona Gardens Recreation Center in Boyle Heights. The doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine come directly from the federal government as part of the grant for the Mass Vaccination Center in Cal State LA, managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Governors’ Office for Emergency Services.
There was a lot of demand on the Inglewood site, with about 70 people forced to join the waiting list due to limited supply, said Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer of the Faithful Central Bible Church. He said those invited to make an appointment include members of his church and the surrounding community who are 65 or older.
State Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) spoke at the event, claiming that the main obstacle to vaccinating more people in the black community is lack of access, not fear of the vaccine.
“It’s a matter of awareness,” he said, noting that a recent vaccination clinic at the Kedren Community Health Center in South Los Angeles appears to be attracting more people from outside the area than from within the area.
“Three hundred people were in line. Five of them were African Americans. People were from Rolling Hills, Beverly Hills. How do they get the word out? He said. “They seem to know more than we do, so we need to work harder to articulate the word.”
Newsom said in terms of raw numbers, California has now surpassed the number of vaccinations administered in Israel, which has the highest vaccination rate in the world. But California still has a long way to go to improve the per capita vaccination rate, hampered by a shortage of supply coming from the federal government.
Severe winter storms in the U.S. have hampered the delivery of 702,000 doses of Moderna vaccine to California over the past few days, Newsom said. These delays have forced officials to close several mass vaccination sites, including Disneyland and Dodger Stadium.
In the mayor’s office, all six vaccination sites in the city, including Dodger Stadium, will resume Tuesday.