ANALYSIS: Covid-19 is devastating communities of color. Can vaccines counter racial inequity?

Covid-19 is devastating communities of color. Can vaccines counter racial inequity? Public health officials are endeavoring to make sure inoculation against a virus that has ravaged communities of color — killing 1 in 1,000 Black Americans by the fall — gets to the people at greatest risk. Isaac Stanley-Becker, Lena H. Sun Washington Post

ALSO See: OPINION: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/opinions/african-americans-covid-vaccine-sacks/index.html

-------

Haywood County, a majority-Black community not far from Memphis, has one health department, one nursing home and no hospitals. The fatality rate of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is 50 percent higher than the state average.

But a supply of vaccines based strictly on its population would leave the county in the Tennessee Delta, site of the first known slaying of an NAACP member for civil rights activities, woefully short. There would be too few doses to make a dent in the disease’s burden on residents of color, who have been “devastated, both young and old,” said Gloria Jean Sweet-Love, who lives in Brownsville, the county seat, and serves as president of the NAACP’s state conference.

“Can you believe it?” she asked. “In the richest country in the world.”

To account for the disparity, state officials are doing something unusual. They are taking a portion of their share of shots off the top and rushing it to places beset by poverty, poor housing and other factors most linked to the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on people of color. Explaining the move recently, Michelle D. Fiscus, who leads Tennessee’s immunization program, said, “Covid-19 has revealed that great disparity in outcomes for Black Americans.”

Haywood County, a majority-Black community not far from Memphis, has one health department, one nursing home and no hospitals. The fatality rate of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is 50 percent higher than the state average.

But a supply of vaccines based strictly on its population would leave the county in the Tennessee Delta, site of the first known slaying of an NAACP member for civil rights activities, woefully short. There would be too few doses to make a dent in the disease’s burden on residents of color, who have been “devastated, both young and old,” said Gloria Jean Sweet-Love, who lives in Brownsville, the county seat, and serves as president of the NAACP’s state conference.

“Can you believe it?” she asked. “In the richest country in the world.”

To account for the disparity, state officials are doing something unusual. They are taking a portion of their share of shots off the top and rushing it to places beset by poverty, poor housing and other factors most linked to the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on people of color. Explaining the move recently, Michelle D. Fiscus, who leads Tennessee’s immunization program, said, “Covid-19 has revealed that great disparity in outcomes for Black Americans.” ...

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group has signaled it will recommend prioritization of certain essential workers, in part to address racial disparities exposed by the pandemic. People of color are overrepresented in industries such as food processing and transit, in jobs impossible to do from home. Some of these workers could gain access to the shots early in the new year, after health-care workers and residents and staffers at long-term care facilities. ...

v

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags: