Black and Latino communities are being bypassed in the U.S. vaccine rollout, including in states that haven't released race and ethnicity data yet, according to a Politico analysis.
Race and ethnicity data was only collected from 51.9 percent of people who received a COVID-19 vaccine in the first month they were available, according to a Feb. 1 CDC report. Among those, just 5 percent have gone to Black Americans and only 11 percent were given to Latino recipients. Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, chair of President Joe Biden's COVID-19 equity task force, said during a Feb. 1 media briefing that addressing this insufficient data should be an urgent priority.
"We cannot ensure an equitable vaccination program without data to guide us," Dr. Nunez-Smith said.
President Biden signed an executive order aimed at addressing racial equity and tapped several advisers to focus on disparities in health. However, the federal government doesn't explicitly order vaccines be administered equitably, reports Politico.
"In the absence of a mandate, our natural drift is to inequity," said Debra Furr-Holden, PhD, a public health expert at East Lansing-based Michigan State University who serves on the state's coronavirus racial disparities task force.
Experts say vaccine hesitancy may cause some of the racial gap, citing polls in which Black Americans report more concern about the safety of new vaccines than their white counterparts.
"Vaccine hesitancy is a real concern," said Anne Sosin, director for Hanover, N.H.-based Dartmouth Center for Global Health Equity. "But I worry that focus on vaccine hesitancy is a way to deflect responsibility for equitable distribution on the front end."
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