In the United States, blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans are dying at a rate three times that of whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). English). The current coronavirus vaccination campaign also shows a racial gap: Blacks lag behind whites in many areas, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.
Due to deportation fears, there is also mistrust among Hispanics, which is undermining vaccination efforts in that community, aside from the language barrier, activists say.
A preliminary survey of the 17 states and two cities that have released a racial breakdown of vaccinations as of January 25 found that black people everywhere are being vaccinated at levels below their proportion of the population, in some cases significantly below.
It should be noted that the data came from Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia, in addition to the cities of Philadelphia and Chicago.
That is despite the fact that black people make up a much larger percentage of the country’s health workers, who were placed at the front of the lines to receive injections when the campaign began in mid-December.
For example, in North Carolina, black people make up 22% of the population and 26% of healthcare workers, but they are only 11% of those who have received vaccinations so far. Whites, a category in which the state includes Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites, make up 68% of the population and 82% of those vaccinated.
The racial gap in vaccinations is extremely concerning, given that the coronavirus has caused a disproportionately higher toll of severe illness and deaths among the black population in the United States, where the pandemic has killed more than 430,000 people.
“We are going to see a widening and exacerbation of racial inequities in health that existed before the pandemic and worsened during the pandemic if our communities do not have access to the vaccine,” said Dr. Uché Blackstock, an emergency physician in New York and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, an advocacy group dealing with bias and inequality.
Experts say that several factors could be driving the emerging disparity, including a deep distrust of the black community in the medical establishment due to a history of discrimination, inadequate access to the vaccine in black neighborhoods and a digital divide that could make it difficult to obtain crucial information . Registration for vaccines is being done mostly online.
“It’s infuriating and difficult,” said Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who runs the vaccination program in Tennessee, a state that has doubled the doses sent to some heavily-hit rural areas, but has encountered deep-seated mistrust from some black residents.
“We have to work very hard to rebuild that trust and vaccinate those people,” Fiscus said. “They are dying. They are being hospitalized.”
Hispanics also lag behind in vaccinations, but their levels are closer to expectations in most of the places studied. On average, Hispanics are younger than the rest of Americans and vaccinations have not yet been open to young people.
However, several states where Hispanic communities were particularly hit by the virus have yet to report numbers, notably California and New York.
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