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About half of New Yorkers are not yet convinced they’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine – complicating efforts to finally tame the killer virus, according to an investigation released Friday.
New York City Health Commissioner Dr David Chokshi revealed details of the online survey during a city council hearing on vaccine distribution – and admitted that persuading the people of the Big Apple to getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was a big challenge.
The unpublished Health Ministry survey, conducted October 3-14, found that just over half – 52.6% of city respondents – would receive the vaccine.
Twenty percent of Gotham residents said they would not take the vaccine and 27 percent were unsure.
According to the survey, more white New Yorkers said they would be vaccinated compared to black, Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers.
The health ministry did not provide a racial or ethnic breakdown of the results on Friday.
Skepticism of city residents’ vaccines is consistent with national polls.
City health officials are conducting more surveys to assess changes in public sentiment as they prepare to distribute the COVID-19 preventive vaccine.
“We need New Yorkers to trust us,” said Chokshi, who said everyday New Yorkers likely would not be eligible to receive the vaccines until mid-2021.
“Some communities – especially the black community – this trust will be hard-earned due to decades of systemic racism,” the health commissioner said.
He alluded to the historic medical mistreatment of blacks, and some council members cited the infamous Tuskegee experiments performed on black men and the forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women, two dark moments in American medical history.
Meanwhile, there are anti-vaxxers raising religious objections to the gunfire.
Authorities closed yeshivas in Brooklyn and Queens last year for failing to comply with requirements for students to be vaccinated against measles in the midst of an outbreak.
Governor Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers subsequently approved legislation eliminating religious exemptions for vaccination warrants.
Council members said persuading skeptics to take the vaccine is potentially a serious obstacle.
“We have a lot of work to do. There are reports of medical staff not wanting to be vaccinated. If healthcare workers refuse, it will influence the general public,” the council’s health committee said. Mark Levine (D-Manhattan).
“The goal is to have a vaccination rate of 75 to 80% to be effective. We cannot afford to have large swathes of the city that refuse vaccination. “
The joint hearing was conducted by the health committees of the Council and public hospitals.
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