Why black Americans are not vaccinated against COVID-19 at the same rate as whites

Early data on the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines shows that minority populations in the United States already disproportionately affected by the pandemic are not being vaccinated at the same rate as white Americans.

Yahoo News medical contributor Dr. Uché Blackstock believes several factors contribute to this disparity.

“One of the problems I saw early on is that if you’re going to have primarily hospitals and pharmacies dispensing the vaccine, we’re going to miss a lot of people,” Blackstock said. According to a recent GoodRX study, minority communities tend to have fewer pharmacies per capita, which puts them at a disadvantage depending on where they live.

“We need to get the vaccines to the people,” Blackstock added, suggesting that mobile vaccination units could help improve access in areas where transport is a problem.

In 16 states that released preliminary data on who received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, white residents were more likely to have received an injection than black people, KHN News reported. In Pennsylvania, data up to Jan. 14 showed that while 1.3% of whites in the state had received a vaccination, only 0.3% of black residents had. In Mississippi, 1.3% of African American residents have been vaccinated so far, compared to 3.5% of white residents.

While there are many factors that may account for the early gap in vaccination rates, Blackstock believes the trend will continue.

“It’s the same thing people said at the start of the pandemic, when there was incomplete data that showed blacks and Latinxes were also infected and hospitalized and dying at higher rates. But once we got the full data, it confirmed the initial data, as if we already know which communities are vulnerable, ”Blackstock said.

African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans die from COVID-19 at almost three times more than white Americans, according to figures provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These minority groups are also about four times more likely to be hospitalized with the coronavirus than white Americans.

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“If we see these trends early on, I think now is the time to respond to this data, right?” Blackstock said about the vaccine rollout. “To guide our efforts, according to the data. And so we see these trends so early, we can actually try to correct the course. “

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki spoke on Monday of the challenge of achieving President Biden’s goal of vaccinating 1 million Americans every day for the next 100 days.

“It’s not just about supplying, which is of course essential. It’s also about having more people who can physically put the gunfire in the arms of the Americans and making sure we have places where that can be done, ”Psaki said.

Biden has often spoken of the need for a fair response to the pandemic. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order declaring that “the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated severe and pervasive health and social inequalities in America” ​​and directing federal agencies to coordinate a response.

Blackstock said another contributing factor to low preliminary vaccination rates among African Americans is vaccine skepticism, which she attributed to a long-standing pattern of discrimination against minorities by the medical facility. But she thinks there are ways to fight this mistrust.

“I think that in the face of this problem, what needs to be done is we need health professionals and these communities to be able to have conversations with their patients about the vaccine and answer these questions” , she said, adding that such an effort should be supported by a national public health campaign to promote vaccines.

“We have to see [it] on buses and trains and billboards, social media, TV commercials, ”Blackstock said. “We need to see information about the vaccine, why it’s important for people to take it, and to see positive images around talking about vaccines. We haven’t seen that at all.

Finally, Blackstock noted that some minority communities do not have access or mastery of the technology required by some health systems to register for an appointment to be vaccinated.

“If you have the vaccines there, but people in the community can’t get an appointment because of the cumbersome registration process for a vaccine … then the people who need the vaccine won’t. are not going to do it right, ”Blackstock added. “And we will reinforce the inequalities that we have already seen in the pandemic.”

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