Black Americans Are Being Vaccinated For COVID-19 At A Much Lower Rate
Early data on the coronavirus vaccine reveal that communities of color in the United States are not being immunized at the same rate as white Americans.
According to Yahoo News Medical Contributor Dr. Uché Blackstock multiple factors are contributing to the disparity.
“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.
The research was conducted by GoodRX and showed how the higher lack of access to pharmacies puts communities of color at a disadvantage based on where they live.
“We need to bring the vaccines to the people,” Blackstock added, suggesting that mobile vaccination units could help increase the number of people vaccinated where access is more scarce.
According to KHN news, in the 16 states that have released preliminary data on people who have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, white residents were more likely to receive a shot than Black residents.
In Pennsylvania, data revealed that while 1.3 percent of whites in the state had received the vaccination, only 0.3 percent of Black residents had. Blackstock believes the pattern, which varies in other states regarding the discrepancy, will continue as more people get the vaccine.
“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,” he said. “But then once we got the complete data it confirmed the initial data, like we already know which communities are vulnerable.”
Black Americans and communities of color have already been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Black people are already disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic. According to APM Research Lab, Black and Indigenous populations’ COVID-19 death rate is higher than 1 in 750.
Another APM Research Lab study reveals 1 in 1,020 African Americans have been killed by COVID-19 (97.9 deaths per 100,000). “Black Americans continue to experience the highest actual COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide—more than twice as high as the rate for Whites and Asians, who have the lowest actual rates,” the study reads.
