Eleazar Cordova, a 43-year-old Mexican who owns and also works at a restaurant called Pablito’s Taqueria in Brooklyn, said she felt “a lot of satisfaction.”
“On the one hand it’s scary, but at the same time you have to have faith in God,” said Cordova, who recently suffered the death of his father-in-law and mother-in-law from COVID-19 in Mexico.
Hispanics represent 44% of the total number of restaurant workers in the city, which translates into the largest block of employees in these establishments. The same report indicates that in 2018 60% of restaurant workers in the city were immigrants.
Hispanics, along with African Americans, have been one of the groups most affected by COVID-19 in New York, with a high number of deaths. However, so far, 48% of city residents who have received at least one dose of the vaccine They are white, according to recent municipal data.
Only 11% of the doses administered in New York have been received by African Americans and 15% by Hispanics, even though African Americans and Hispanics represent 24% and 29% of the city’s population, respectively.
For Axayacatl Figueroa, a 42-year-old Mexican who works in the kitchen of a Vietnamese restaurant in Brooklyn, the vaccine is good news. “It is an opportunity to have a little more health,” he said. “From the moment we are born they give us vaccines. There is no other ”.
Yareli Adán, another Mexican who works at Pablito’s, is not so sure. “I really do not know. Honestly, I’m scared to get vaccinated, but I know I’m an essential worker, ”said the 21-year-old.
Spokesmen for the city said that people who qualify for the vaccine because of their employment must show that it forces them to be in contact with the public and that they work in New York. Immigration status is not asked of people who are going to be vaccinated. They can show a letter from their employer or a pay stub.
–
