Why Black Americans Are Less Likely to Take the COVID Vaccine

African-Americans are less likely to want to take the COVID-19 vaccine because of a deep-rooted distrust of national institutions and memories of former public health scandals such as the Tuskegee experiment, Black health leaders have said.

A poll released by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research on February 10 found that hesitancy around the vaccine was more prominent among Black Americans compared with other ethnicities.

The survey, conducted on 1,055 adults between January 28 to February 1, revealed that Black Americans were less likely than white Americans to say they have received the shot or will definitely or probably get vaccinated, 57 per cent compared to 68 percent.

But, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black Americans are 1.1 times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than white Americans, are 2.9 times more likely to need hospitalization and 1.9 times more likely to die of the disease.

Reed Tuckson, a founding member of the Black Coalition Against COVID (BCAC), believes the increased resistance of Black Americans to take the vaccine comes from a long-time distrust in U.S.

The doctor said that Black people were becoming more confident about having the vaccine as more of the population gets inoculated.

He added that to increase confidence in Black communities around the vaccine, the distrust needs to be addressed in other sectors too, such as the justice system.

The BCAC has mobilized four Black American medical schools, the National Medical Association and the National Black Nurses Association to partner with media companies to disseminate accurate and scientifically valid information from the most trusted sources in the Black community.

"Partnerships with the creative community are essential for our health professionals to reach the community that we love, care about and care for," he said.

"The most common reasons for vaccine hesitancy that I have heard across multiple forums and across the older demographic of individual is awareness of historic truths such as the Tuskegee experiment, in which Black men were kept untreated for syphilis long after penicillin was found to be a cure and Henrietta Lacks, whose DNA was used without her permission.