As the coronavirus pandemic swept the world this past year, lockdown-weary people around the globe were thrilled when the Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer-NBioTech’s COVID vaccine for emergency use on December 11th, 2020. However, vaccination distribution has only recently begun to pick up speed.
With the Biden Administration’s ambitious goal of vaccinating at least one million Americans each day, we’re starting to see a slight decline in COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. It will take drastic measures to improve these numbers due to the lack of effort from the Trump administration. Before Biden took office, Alabama’s vaccination hotline crashed multiple times, and the state only used one in five vaccine doses the federal government had supplied to them. Inefficiency led to ineffectiveness, and the US fell farther and farther behind other countries in the vaccination process. Now, 15% of the US population is at least partly vaccinated.
While the Biden Administration has made significant progress, there is one rather large aspect of the vaccination process where they have not been successful: racial disparities in terms of who gets vaccinated first. Just 5% of the vaccines administered in the US have gone to Black Americans, who make up over 12% of the US population. Meanwhile, only 11% of the vaccines were given to Latinx recipients, who make up nearly 19% of the population. The non-Hispanic white population of the US has been getting vaccinated at twice the rate of that of Black Americans; in some states, white people are vaccinated at three times the rate of Blacks and other minorities. These numbers offer a startling picture of the role of race in vaccinations, especially when taken into account alongside the fact that POC are far more likely to contract the virus than their white counterparts; they also usually have a lower median income than white people, making it even more crucial that they get the vaccine.
Privilege and wealth have also played far too big a role in who gets immunized first. Washington, D.C.’s hardest-hit neighborhoods— many of which are predominantly Black— have had a mere 7-9% of their elderly population vaccinated, compared to 25% in the wealthier areas. Often, POC are shut out of this wealthy area of society, so in many of these scenarios, they do not have the resources to pay for the vaccine to protect them. Tier lists that organize people based on their risk of contracting COVID have been able to prevent some of these drastic differences, but because wealthier people able to pay for early access to the vaccine— whether or not they are high-risk— these tiers are less effective.
It is important that organizations administering the vaccine don’t allow people to jump ahead in line based on their socioeconomic status because the people who truly need the vaccine won’t get it in time. Although Biden has made attempts to address this inequity, these racial disparities could have been preemptively prevented by funding organizations that would provide vaccine access to minority communities— or better yet, by founding organizations directly immediately after the vaccine was approved. However, this can still be done! The Biden Administration simply needs to funnel more resources into equity efforts in terms of the vaccination process, and we will see a change in the percentage of minority communities being vaccinated.
Additionally, local and state governments need to support clinics and pharmacies as they lead the vaccination process. Dr. Leslie Schumacher, a teacher at GA, waited to be vaccinated in Philadelphia from 1 pm to 12:30 am amid snow and rain before finally receiving the first dose of the Moderna vaccine at 2:30 in the morning. There was a lack of organization within the clinic, which was understaffed and underprepared to meet the overwhelming number of people waiting to be inoculated. This disorganization is likely due to a lack of federal and state government funding and staff— an area we hope to see President Biden improve upon in the coming weeks.
Nevertheless, all the people who were vaccinated that day are thankful to the Black Doctors COVID Consortium, which was one of the earliest groups in the area to offer systematic vaccination distribution. They have made it possible for people in Philly to be vaccinated. This organization is doing a wonderful job of providing the vaccine to those who were racially and socioeconomically disadvantaged— specifically, members of the Black community who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus (higher susceptibility to the virus & lower income) and have limited access to the vaccine. The BDCC did, in fact, accomplish its goal in vaccinating minorities, as 75% of the people vaccinated at the clinic were POC. All things considered, the US is doing better in terms of vaccination rates, but there are most certainly areas in terms of distribution— most especially those pertaining to race and class— where we could improve. It is my hope that President Biden will do just that.
Resources:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/01/covid-vaccine-racial-disparities-464387
https://time.com/5933825/biden-new-vaccine-plan/
Interview with Dr. Schumacher