[ad_1]
Governor Gavin Newsom admitted on Sunday that state and local health officials had stumbled in distributing the COVID-19 vaccine fairly among Latino and black communities in California.
Speaking at a mobile vaccination clinic in Inglewood, Newsom said the state must “do more and better” to provide outreach services and set up vaccination sites directly in communities that have been hit the hardest. affected by the virus.
“We are not doing enough. We need to create a lot more programs like this, ”he said. “We have to get people back to work. We’ve got to get the people back to church. And we have to get people back to school.
Of the 7.3 million doses administered in California, 2.9% went to black residents, 16% to Latinos and 13% to Asian Americans, compared to 32.7% to whites, according to the reports. state data.
These disparities are reflected to some extent in LA County, where 24% of black residents aged 65 and over received at least one dose of the vaccine, senior Latinos at 29% and senior Asian Americans at 39%, versus 43% among whites. seniors, according to county public health data.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 death rate for Latinos is triple that of whites in the county, with a daily rate of 48 deaths per 100,000 people compared to 16 deaths per 100,000 people for whites, according to data from County of mid-January. Black residents were dying at a rate of 23 deaths per 100,000 population.
Newsom, which faces a recall campaign with nearly 1.1 million signatures, sought to inform the state’s efforts to immunize “hard to reach” and “disproportionately affected” communities by visiting two sites Sunday, including the one in Inglewood and another in Boyle Heights.
“We recognize our responsibility to do more,” he said, commenting on a range of initiatives his office is involved in across the state. “We focus on agricultural workers. We are in Coachella Valley as part of a coalition collaboration for equity focused on farm workers and ephemeral sites in partnership with ranchers and farm managers.
Los Angeles Eastside, who is predominantly Latino, has suffered from one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the county. Inglewood has also recorded a high rate of cases among its predominantly Latino and black population, with 1 in 9 people infected, according to county public health data.
Only about 250 people were due to be vaccinated on Sunday at each of the mobile clinics that Newsom visited, located at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood and the Ramona Gardens Recreation Center in Boyle Heights. Doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine came directly from the federal government as part of the allocation for the mass vaccination site in Cal State LA managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services .
There was a lot of demand at the Inglewood site, with around 70 people forced to join the wait list due to limited supply, said Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer of Faithful Central Bible Church. He said those who had been invited to make an appointment included members of his church and the surrounding community aged 65 or older.
State Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) spoke at the event, saying the main obstacle to getting more people in the black community vaccinated is lack of access, and no fear of the vaccine.
“It’s an awareness issue,” he said, noting that a recent vaccination clinic at the Kedren Community Health Center in South Los Angeles seemed to attract more people from outside the area than from inside the neighborhood.
“Three hundred people were in line. Five of them were African American. People were from Rolling Hills, Beverly Hills. How did they get the message across? ” he said. “They seemed to know more than us, so we have to do a better job of getting the message out.”
Newsom said that in terms of raw numbers, California has now exceeded the number of vaccinations given in Israel, which has the highest vaccination rate in the world. But California still has a long way to go to improve its per capita immunization rate, hampered by a shortage of supplies from the federal government.
Severe winter storms across the United States have prevented the delivery of 702,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine to California in recent days, Newsom said. These delays have forced officials to shut down several mass vaccination sites, including Disneyland and Dodger Stadium.
In Los Angeles, the six city-run vaccination sites, including Dodger Stadium, will resume operations on Tuesday, according to the mayor’s office.
[ad_2]
Source link