Flawed Race Data on Coronavirus Vaccine Recipients Leaves Deployment Fairness Uncertain | Coronavirus

Poor data collection regarding the race of people vaccinated against the coronavirus in Louisiana has made it difficult for state officials to understand whether the initial doses were distributed fairly to residents of the state.

Just over a month since vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna began reaching Louisiana, the majority of people who received the vaccine have been marked “other” or “unknown” on forms as hospitals and pharmacies must submit to the Louisiana Department of Health.

About 36% were marked “other” and 20% were marked “unknown,” according to data released Friday by Governor John Bel Edwards. This means that the state does not know the breed of more than half of the roughly 300,000 doses administered to date.

Of the recipients classified by race, 33% were White, 10% were Black, 0.85% were Asian, 0.1% were Native Hawaiians, and 0.12% were American Indian.

At a press conference on Friday, Edwards called the data a “small problem” and said the state “will do everything possible to ensure that suppliers” submit complete data.

The lack of race data paints an unclear picture of who gets vaccinated in the state. It could also undermine pressure from Edwards and federal officials to fairly distribute vaccines after the virus itself wreaks disproportionate havoc on black and Latin American communities.

“This means we don’t know what the information we have really means,” said Susan Hassig, epidemiologist at Tulane University. “Yes [the unknown] is anywhere above 10 or 15%, it becomes really problematic. “

Louisiana joins 17 other states releasing vaccine data on race and ethnicity, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Of these, few seem to have the same data collection problem.

Mississippi, for example, had 13% of its inoculated group marked as “other” and included a multiracial category. Mississippi has also tracked ethnicity separately, allowing patients to mark whether they are Hispanic or non-Hispanic.

Louisiana’s scorecard does not include ethnicity and is one of four states where the “unknown” or “other” portion of the data constitutes the majority of immunizations. The others are Pennsylvania, Virginia and Tennessee.

Unknown usually means the breed has been left blank. Other, however, is an option chosen by the provider or the patient.

And while some vaccinated people may have chosen others, the data does not match the data at the population level. According to data from the 2019 U.S. Census, 1.8% of Louisiana residents selected two or more races and 5.3% chose Hispanic or Latino. The rest chose a race.

The flaw can come from the way data is collected, Hassig said. Mississippi requires people to register in advance online using a main portal. Louisiana has a more rambling process for obtaining a vaccine, leaving distribution to a network of pharmacies intended to cover a large geographic area.

Some, like Walgreens, require patients to provide their own race data when booking an appointment online. But others may have left the choice of breed to the suppliers, which is not always effective.

“If it’s a form (that patients) fill out on their own, they’re more comfortable filling out the information,” Hassig said.

To collect the most accurate information, especially in a diverse population, the intake form should have several options.

“Asking questions to categorize according to race gets complicated very quickly,” said Hassig. “Look at our vice president. She is half black, half Asian. She is claimed as black, she is claimed as Asian. The most precise way would be to have multi-combinatorial options. “

There could be reasons for choosing “other,” said Thomas LaVeist, dean of Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and member of the COVID-19 Equity Task Force in state health. People of color may be vaccinated at a higher rate, but do not want to indicate their race for fear of being treated differently.

Employees who distribute the vaccine may also lack training on the importance of collecting race data.

“Sometimes people in the health care industry wouldn’t complete data on race because they didn’t see the importance of it,” LaVeist said. But for something like that, race is an extremely important variable to have because it allows us to monitor how we are doing, are we reaching the whole population. “

The data release Friday follows a stern memo from Dr Joe Kanter, a senior coronavirus response official, that providers cannot discriminate by reserving injections for existing patients. A letter published the same day also dealt with the selection of “other” as a breed.

“Systematically choosing ‘other’ as the default in the field of racing is not acceptable and will hamper the state’s ability to understand and address inequalities in vaccine distribution,” the letter said.

The state’s current immunization plan does not prioritize anyone based on race or ethnicity. However, this is a factor that has been taken into account.

“When you look at the black population and who has been affected, these are the people who work in essential jobs,” said Hassig, an advisor working on the Louisiana Department of Health’s vaccine distribution plan. “This is one of the reasons we put these people high on the priority list.”

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