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Why Black Americans aren't being vaccinated for COVID-19 at the same rate as whites - Yahoo News

Why Black Americans aren't being vaccinated for COVID-19 at the same rate as whites - Yahoo News

Why Black Americans aren't being vaccinated for COVID-19 at the same rate as whites - Yahoo News
Jan 25, 2021 3 mins, 34 secs

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

“One of the problems that I saw very early on is that if you’re going to have mostly hospitals and pharmacies dispensing the vaccine, we’re going to miss a lot of people,” Blackstock said.

“We need to bring the vaccines to the people,” Blackstock added, suggesting that mobile vaccination units could help increase access in areas where transportation is an issue.

In 16 states that have released preliminary data on who has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, white residents were more likely to have received a shot than Blacks, KHN news reported.

In Mississippi, 1.3 percent of African Americans residents have been vaccinated so far, compared with 3.5 percent of white residents.

While there are numerous factors that might account for the early discrepancy in the rate of vaccination, Blackstock thinks the pattern will hold.

“It’s the same thing that people said at the beginning of the pandemic, when there was incomplete data that showed that Black and Latinx people were also being infected and hospitalized and dying at higher rates.

But then once we got the complete data it confirmed the initial data, like we already know which communities are vulnerable,” Blackstock said.

African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans die from COVID-19 at nearly three times the rate as white Americans, according to figures provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These minority groups are also about four times as likely to be hospitalized with the coronavirus as white Americans are.

“If we’re seeing these trends at the beginning, I think now is an opportunity to respond to that data, right?” Blackstock said of the rollout of the vaccine.

On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki spoke of the challenge of meeting President Biden’s goal of vaccinating 1 million Americans every day for the next 100 days.

It’s also about having more people that can physically put the shots into the arms of Americans and ensuring that we have places that that can be done,” Psaki said.

Blackstock said another factor contributing to preliminary low vaccination rates among African Americans is vaccine skepticism, which she attributed to a long-standing pattern of discrimination against minorities by the medical establishment.

“I think, with that issue, what needs to happen is we need health care professionals in those communities to be able to have conversations with their patients about the vaccine and to answer those questions,” she said, adding that those one-on-one efforts should be bolstered by a national public health campaign to promote vaccines.

“We need to see [it] on buses and trains and billboards, social media, commercials on TV,” Blackstock said.

“If you have the vaccines there, but people from the community are not able to get appointments because of the cumbersome process for signing up for a vaccine … then the people who need the vaccine aren’t going to get it right,” Blackstock added.

The White House confirmed that Dr.

"Other than rare exceptions, we are closing the sky hermetically to prevent the entry of the virus variants and also to ensure that we progress quickly with our vaccination campaign," said Benjamin Netanuahu, the Israeli prime minister.

Also on Sunday, Israel expanded its rapid vaccination drive to include 16-18 year-olds in an effort to get them back in schools to take their winter examinations.

Israel struck a deal with Pfizer at the beginning of January that allowed them to expedite delivery of the vaccine, in return for sharing extensive data on their vaccination campaign with the rest of the world.

Yuli Edelstein, the Israeli health minister, told The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that the data from their vaccination programme suggests a first dose offered around 30 per cent protection from coronavirus.

Indian and Chinese army commanders met for the ninth round of talks after a gap of two-and-a-half months in Ladakh on Sunday but neither side released any details of the outcome.

On Sunday, 12 Chinese fighter jets entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, along with a reconnaissance aircraft and two anti-submarine aircraft, Taiwan’s defence ministry said.

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