2 hard-hit cities, 2 divergent destinations for vaccine launches

CENTRAL FALLS, RI (AP) – Mario Valdez, his wife and 18-year-old son were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 this month as part of a special effort to inoculate all residents of Central Falls, the hardest-hit Rhode Island community by the pandemic.

“I’m happy,” said the 62-year-old school bus driver shortly after receiving his second and final dose. “Many people here have COVID. You better be safe. “

Approximately 50 miles (80 kilometers) across the state border is Chelsea, a city in Massachusetts that was one of the first epicenters of the virus. Like Central Falls, it is a small old industrial town that is predominantly Latin. Residents of both cities live in dense rows of three-story houses and apartment complexes, providing the workforce for their respective state capitals of Providence and Boston.

But the fortunes of the two cities could not have been more different during the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Mannix Resto, a sophomore in Chelsea’s high school, fears that Massachusetts’ slow pace of vaccination will continue to prevent students from attending classes in person. The 15-year-old says that no one in his family has been vaccinated yet, as the state focuses on frontline workers and older residents or those with serious health problems.

“I just want to know how much longer this is going to last,” said Resto earlier this month, while walking with a friend on Broadway, Chelsea’s busy main street. “It’s been a year. We cannot continue living like this. “

Rhode Island began offering vaccines to elderly Central Falls residents in late December and gradually expanded so that anyone aged 18 or over who lives or works in the city is now eligible.

Nearly a third of the city’s adults received at least one dose of the vaccine and about 16% are fully vaccinated, according to state data. Health officials say the city of about 20,000 has seen a sharp drop in COVID-19 cases as a result.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, public health experts, civil rights groups and immigrant activists have been complaining for months that the state is not doing enough to ensure that black and Latino residents are vaccinated.

Under increasing pressure, Governor Charlie Baker recently announced outreach and public awareness efforts targeting hard-hit minority communities, but critics say bolder action is needed to make up for the lost ground.

White residents have so far received 66% of all doses in the state, while black residents have received about 5% and Latino residents 4%, according to state data. Meanwhile, black and Latino residents are dying from the virus at a rate three times higher of whites in the state by some measures, and Chelsea remains one of the most affected communities in the state, with a higher COVID-19 positivity rate than the state.

“It’s frustrating,” said Gladys Vega, executive director of La Collaborativa, a nonprofit community in Chelsea that is part of a new state coalition asking for greater equality of vaccines. “Chelsea has repeatedly demonstrated that we support the economy. But we have been neglected for decades. “

Some states and counties have adopted different approaches to ensure that vaccines are distributed fairly to communities of color, but many government leaders are reluctant to fully embrace strategies as a necessity, said Dr. Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of the University of California’s public health program, Irvine.

Until affected communities are properly treated, their residents will continue to spread the infection, ensuring that the virus persists, say she and other experts.

“If the pandemic is a fire, vaccination is water,” said Boden-Albala. “You need to bring it to where the fire is burning the most, or you will never put it out.”

To be sure, the leaders of Rhode Island and Massachusetts faced fierce criticism about the slow pace of vaccinations in general in their states. And the vaccine was not so smoothly launched in Central Falls.

Mayor Maria Rivera, who took office in January, says the state did not provide additional resources or manpower for deployment in Central Falls, which went bankrupt during the 2008 recession and emerged from state bankruptcy in 2013.

The city’s main vaccination site, held every Saturday in the college gym, is an almost entirely voluntary operation.

Rivera says city volunteers have gone door-to-door registering residents who do not want to or cannot sign up for appointments online or over the phone. They also had to reassure residents who live in the country illegally that they will not be targeted by immigrant police for trying to shoot, she says.

“We just want them to show up,” says Rivera. “We are not going to send anyone away.”

According to data provided by Rivera’s office this week, almost 40% of doses went to Latinos and 27% to whites in three of the city’s main vaccination sites. Another 23% of vaccine recipients did not provide their race or ethnicity, and demographic data were not available for other vaccine locations, the office said.

Across the state line in Chelsea, Vega’s organization has partnered with a community health center to launch a public vaccination facility in its Broadway office.

Vega says that bringing the place to the city was a very disputed achievement by the local defenders. The only mass vaccination site the state has opened so far in a black community in the Boston area is 10 miles from Chelsea, in Boston’s historically Black Roxbury neighborhood, she and other supporters say.

And unlike vaccination sites in Central Falls, Chelsea sites are limited by Massachusetts eligibility rules, which were expanded only last week for people aged 65 and over, as well as people with two or more serious medical conditions.

The clinic has vaccinated more than 900 since opening on February 4, but the numbers are expected to rise this week as more people in the state qualify now, according to the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, which operates the site.

Earlier this month, David Evans was surprised to find that he had the clinic primarily for himself when he received his first dose. “It went well,” said the 82-year-old Chelsea resident. “I was preparing for this to be an ordeal after hearing about places where people couldn’t get appointments or didn’t have vaccines.”

On Broadway that same day, the clinic’s opening was met with indifference and indifference, suggesting that authorities have a long way to go to win over skeptical residents.

“If the government tells me that I should get the vaccine, then I will. But at the moment, I don’t want to, ”said Cesar Osorio, a 30-year-old construction worker who washed his clothes in a self-service laundry on the same block. “Spaniards, we have our own medicines. We don’t want vaccines. “

The mayor of Central Falls, Maria Rivera, already dreams of the return of popular community events, such as the city’s summer salsa nights.

She says the city is on track to vaccinate most residents by summer. “I’m looking forward to the day when we won’t have to wear masks,” Rivera said recently as a volunteer at the school.

Resident Mario Valdez has equally modest hopes. Now that he and his family are fully vaccinated, they plan to fly to their native Guatemala in July, a trip they take almost every year to visit relatives.

“It will be great,” he said. “We love it down there.”