Revealed: Study reveals racial disparity, whites vaccinated at higher rates than black Americans | American News

A racial divide has widened in the United States’ Covid-19 vaccination campaign, with black Americans in many places lagging behind whites in receiving vaccines, according to an analysis by the United States. Associated Press.

A first look at the 17 states and two cities that displayed racial breaks as of Jan. 25 revealed that blacks around the world are being vaccinated at levels below their proportion of the general population, in some cases significantly lower.

This is true even though they represent a huge percentage of the country’s healthcare workers, who were put on the frontlines for injections when the campaign began in mid-December.

For example, in North Carolina, blacks make up 22% of the population and 26% of the healthcare workforce, but only 11% of those vaccinated so far. Whites, a category in which the state includes both Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, make up 68% of the population and 82% of those vaccinated.

The gap is of deep concern to some, given that the coronavirus has wreaked disproportionate havoc on serious illnesses and deaths of blacks in the United States, where the scourge has killed more than 430,000 Americans. Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans die from Covid-19 nearly three times more than whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are going to see a worsening and exacerbation of the racial inequalities in health that existed before the pandemic and which worsened during the pandemic if our communities cannot access the vaccine,” said Dr Uche Blackstock, emergency physician at New York and Executive Director of Progressing. Health Equity, an advocacy group that tackles prejudice and inequality.

Experts say several factors could be behind the emerging disparity, including a deep distrust of the medical establishment among African Americans due to a history of discriminatory treatment; insufficient access to vaccine in black neighborhoods; and a digital divide that can make it difficult to obtain crucial information. Vaccination records are largely made online.

“It’s frustrating and empowering,” said Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who heads the Tennessee vaccination program, which is doubling the doses shipped to some heavily affected rural counties but finds deep mistrust among some black Tennesseans.

“We have to work very hard to restore that confidence and to vaccinate these people,” Fiscus said. “They die. They are hospitalized.

Hispanics also lagged behind on vaccines, but their levels were a little closer to expectations in most of the countries studied. Hispanics, on average, are younger than other Americans, and vaccines have not yet been made available to young people.

However, several states where Hispanic communities have been particularly affected by Covid-19 have yet to report data, including California and New York.

President Joe Biden is trying to bring more fairness to the launch of the vaccine he inherited from the Trump administration. The Biden administration encourages states to map and target vulnerable neighborhoods using tools such as the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which incorporates data on race, poverty, overcrowded housing and other factors.

Most states have yet to release racial data on those vaccinated. Even in the states that provided breakdowns, data is often incomplete, and many records lack race details. However, missing information would not be enough to change the situation in most cases.

Data are from Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as two cities, Philadelphia and Chicago.
The AP analysis found that whites get vaccinated at levels closer to or higher than expected in most of the states examined.

At first, healthcare workers and residents of nursing homes generally had priority for vaccinations in the United States.

In the past two weeks, many states have opened up eligibility to a larger group of older people and more frontline workers, which could further reduce the relative proportion of blacks who get vaccinated. The country’s population over 65 is whiter than other age groups.

Among the results:

• In Maryland, blacks make up 30% of the population and 40% of the health care industry, but they only make up 16% of those vaccinated so far. Whites, a designation that in state data includes both Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, make up 55% of the population and 67% of those who have received vaccinations. Hispanics of all races make up 11% of the population and 5% of those vaccinated.

• In Philadelphia, blacks make up 40% of the population, but only 14% of the city’s vaccinated people so far. Hispanics represent 15% of the population and 4% of the vaccinated.

• In Chicago, blacks make up 30% of the population, but only 15% of those vaccinated. With Hispanics, the numbers are 29% versus 17%.

The vaccination campaign was slower and fraught with problems than expected. Many Americans of all races have found it difficult to get vaccinated because the supply is limited. Overall, about 7% of Americans have received at least one dose. But there are other issues that are slowing vaccination among African Americans and other groups, experts said.
Some black neighborhoods have not registered anyone to do vaccinations.

“What we’ve heard over and over again: A lot of black people want to get it from their doctor or local clinic because that’s where the trust lies,” said Dr Thomas Dobbs, head of health at the Mississippi.

Louisiana uses the CDC tool to locate vulnerable neighborhoods without vaccination sites, and then recruits new vaccinators in those neighborhoods, said Dr. Joseph Kanter, a public health official.

Other strategies are in place in some states: providing transportation so people can get to their appointments and reach people confined to their homes through mobile vaccination units.

To address the mistrust, Thomas LaVeist, dean of the faculty of public health and tropical medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans, is recruiting notable African Americans to help promote vaccination. The campaign, titled The Skin You’re In, produced a video by New Orleans hip-hop artist Big Freedia jokingly showing how to wear a mask.

Due to eviction fears, there is also mistrust among Latinos that undermines the vaccination campaign, as well as a language barrier in many cases, activists say.

Many African Americans and other people of color are taking steps to make sure their communities receive the vaccine, including Sameerah Singletary, a health worker from Detroit who will soon receive a vaccine.

More than 1,700 residents of the country’s largest predominantly black city have died from the virus, including some of Singletary’s friends and her godmother. However, he knows many who refuse the vaccine.

“I think there is a collective trauma among black people, even in Detroit, that a lot of people have nothing left,” Singletary said. “They were so traumatized they didn’t care because the virus was just one more layer.”

But he added, “I feel we have to participate in our healing.”