As the U.S. vaccine rollout continues to expand, health justice advocates worry about a racial gap in vaccinations. Black communities have been hard hit by the pandemic, but rates of vaccination in communities of color lag behind largely white communities across the country. Dr. Oni Blackstock, a primary care and HIV physician, argues that age cutoffs should be lowered or removed for Black people in order to speed up inoculations, noting that Black Americans are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white Americans and also dying at rates similar to those of white Americans who are 10 years older. “These fixed-age cutoffs that most states implemented did not take into account structural racism’s toll on Black life expectancy in addition to the impact of the pandemic on the life expectancy of Black people in this country,” says Dr. Blackstock.
The U.S. vaccination campaign is getting a new boost today as the first Johnson & Johnson vaccines are administered. According to the White House, nearly 4 million doses of the single-shot vaccine will be initially given out. Johnson & Johnson is the third COVID vaccine to receive FDA emergency approval.
Nearly 20% of adults in the United States have received at least one vaccine shot so far. But there is a wide racial gap in who’s being vaccinated. While Black and Latinx communities have been hardest hit by the pandemic, rates of vaccination in communities of color are lower than largely white communities across the country. Data from the Centers for Disease Control shows just 5% of vaccines have gone to Black Americans, only 11% to Latinx recipients.
This comes as life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year during the first six months of 2020, largely due to the pandemic. It’s the largest drop since World War II. Life expectancy for Black Americans dropped by almost three years, and 1.9 years for Latinx people.
Some doctors are now calling on the CDC and states to give greater priority to communities of color in the vaccine rollout. Doctors Oni and Uché Blackstock are pushing to lower age cutoffs for African Americans. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, they write, “Black Americans are [not only] twice as likely to die of covid-19 as White Americans but also dying at rates similar to those of White Americans who are 10 years older.” They go on: “Moreover, racial [inequities] are most striking at younger ages; for example, Black people ages 45 to 54 are seven times more likely to die of covid-19 than similarly aged White Americans.”
— source democracynow.org | Mar 02, 2021
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