Early data on the deployment of the COVID-19 vaccines show that minority populations in the United States that are already being excessively affected by the pandemic are not being vaccinated at the same rate as white Americans.
Yahoo News Medical Contributor, dr. Uché Blackstock, believes there are several factors that contribute to this difference.
“One of the problems I saw very early on is that if you’re going to get mostly hospitals and pharmacies handing out the vaccine, we’ll be missing a lot of people,” Blackstock said. According to recent research by GoodRX, minority communities tend to have fewer pharmacies per capita, which disadvantages them based on their place of residence.
“We need to bring the vaccines to the people,” Blackstock added, suggesting that mobile vaccination units could help increase access in areas where transportation is a problem.
In 16 countries that released preliminary data on who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, there was a chance that white residents were more likely to get shot than blacks, reports KHN. In Pennsylvania, data through Jan. 14 showed that while 1.3 percent of whites in the state received a vaccination, only 0.3 percent of black residents had it. In Mississippi, 1.3 percent of the population of African-Americans has been vaccinated so far, compared to 3.5 percent of the white population.
Although there are many factors that may explain the early difference in the vaccination rate, Blackstock believes that the pattern will remain.
‘This is the same thing people said at the beginning of the pandemic, when there were incomplete data showing that black people and Latinx people were also infected and hospitalized and dying at higher prices. But once we get the full data, it confirms the initial data, as we already know which communities are vulnerable, ‘Blackstock said.
African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans die from COVID-19 nearly three times more than white Americans, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. These minority groups are also about four times as likely to be hospitalized with the coronavirus as white Americans are.
“If we see these trends at the beginning, I think, this is now an opportunity to respond to the data, right?” Blackstock said about the deployment of the vaccine. “To direct our efforts according to the data. And if we see these trends early on, we can try to correct the course. ”
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki spoke about the challenge of achieving President Biden’s goal of vaccinating 1 million Americans every day for the next 100 days.
‘Of course, it’s not just about supply. “It is also about more people being able to physically place the shots in the arms of Americans and to ensure that we have places that can be done,” Psaki said.
Biden has often talked about the need for a fair pandemic response. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order declaring that “the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated serious and widespread health and social inequalities in America” and ordered the federal agencies to coordinate a response. .
Blackstock said another factor contributing to the provisional low vaccination rates among African Americans is the skepticism about vaccines, which she attributed to a long-standing pattern of discrimination against minorities by the medical institution. But she believes there are ways to combat the mistrust.
“I think, with the issue, we need health workers and those communities to be able to talk to their patients about the vaccine and to answer the questions,” she said. an effort must be strengthened by a national public health campaign to promote vaccines.
‘We have to see [it] on buses and trains and billboards, social media, TV commercials, ”Blackstock said. ‘We need to see information about the vaccine, why it’s important for people to take it, and to see positive images around the vaccine. We have not seen it at all. ”
Finally, Blackstock noted that some minority communities do not have access to or have the skills with the technology required by some health systems to register for an appointment to be vaccinated.
“If you have the vaccines there, but people from the community are unable to make appointments due to the cumbersome process of signing up for a vaccine … then the people who need the vaccine will not get it right. , “Blackstock added. . “And we are going to reinforce the inequalities we have already seen in the pandemic.”
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