Black Americans Only 5.4% of Covid-19 Vaccine, CDC Says | Corona virus

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that only 5.4% of people vaccinated against the coronavirus were black, in its first analysis of how vaccines were distributed among different demographic groups during the first month of distribution in the United States.

This is less than the proportion of blacks who reside in long-term care homes in the United States (14%) or who work in health care (16%). Both were among the highest priority groups for immunization.

However, the federal health agency stressed that its analysis was hampered by the lack of data. While the 64 states and territories and five federal jurisdictions that undertook the vaccination reported age and sex in almost all cases, just over half of the records included data on race or ethnicity.

“A more comprehensive reporting of race and ethnicity data at the provider and jurisdictional level is essential to ensure rapid detection and response to potential disparities in Covid-19 vaccination,” the researchers wrote.

More than 97% of the data the CDC received contained information on age and 99.9% had information on gender. However, just over half, or 51.9%, of the data contained an entry for race or ethnicity.

Additionally, the researchers said variation in state distribution plans weakened their analysis. States like Florida and Texas quickly expanded vaccine eligibility criteria beyond health workers and medically frail people, to include many over the age of 65.

The CDC study looked at data from more than 12.9 million vaccines in the United States between December 14, 2020 and January 14, 2021. The period covers the weeks immediately after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

For recipients of known race, 60.4% were white, 11.5% were Latino, 6% were Asian, 5.4% were black, and 14.4% reported multiple identities. Of these records, only 6.7 million contained information on race and ethnicity.

Blacks in the United States have died from Covid-19 at a rate 1.5 times higher than whites, and Latin Americans have died at a rate 1.2 times higher, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Independent analyzes have also found “red flags” in reported race and ethnicity data. A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 17 states reported such data. By comparison, 51 states and territories now report racial and ethnic data on deaths, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Blacks and Latinos in the United States have been sick and died from Covid-19 at disproportionate rates, in part due to multi-level disparities and decades-old policies that have made these groups more vulnerable to Covid- 19.

For example, black Americans are almost twice as likely as white Americans to develop type 2 diabetes during their lifetime, a risk factor for serious complications from Covid-19. At the same time, black and Latino workers are over-represented in low-wage, essential worker positions, where it is often difficult to socially distance oneself.

Researchers have linked health disparities to factors as systemic as housing segregation, which at one point was institutionalized as a racist U.S. government policy, to factors as interpersonal as discrimination on the part of health care providers.

The dramatic impact of Covid-19 on blacks and Latinos in the United States has reduced life expectancy at birth by two and three years respectively, according to a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. By comparison, whites lost 0.68 years of life expectancy at birth.