The launch of vaccines in New York City – once the epicenter of the pandemic – has been plagued by major racial disparities, with black and Latino residents receiving far fewer doses than white residents, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday.
The city’s demographic data was incomplete, but the information available revealed for the first time that white New Yorkers are navigating the city’s complicated vaccination system more easily.
Of the nearly 300,000 residents of the city who received a dose and whose race was registered, about 48% were white, 15% were Latino, 15% were Asian and 11% were black. Latino and black residents were underrepresented: the city’s population is approximately 29% Latino and 24% black.
The disparities were even more pronounced among city residents aged 65 and over: only 9% of the approximately 125,000 vaccinated New Yorkers were black.
De Blasio, a Democrat in his second term, said he was frustrated that New Yorkers in communities of color most affected by the pandemic were not being vaccinated. He committed to solving the problem by improving the appointment scheduling system and increasing reach in more languages.
“Clearly, we see a deep disparity that needs to be addressed in an aggressive and creative way,” de Blasio said at a news conference.
Other cities and states across the country have seen similar racial disparities in the vaccine’s launch. In New Jersey, about 48% of the vaccine recipients were white and only 3% were black, although about 15% of the state’s population is black, according to state data. In Chicago, about 15% of the vaccine recipients were black and 53% were white.
But elected officials in New York City immediately blamed Blasio for failing to reach black and Latino residents. The city’s public lawyer, Jumaane Williams, and the controller, Scott Stringer, gave a joint press conference on Sunday, calling the deployment “almost criminal” and a “national constraint”.
“This is a moral and administrative failure of the highest order,” said Stringer, who is running for mayor.
They asked Mr. de Blasio to stop vaccinating people who live outside the city, fix the confusing scheduling sites and provide paid time off for essential workers to be vaccinated.
In New York City, about 600,000 people have received their first dose of the vaccine since mid-December. Mr. de Blasio has said repeatedly that the city is running out of doses and cannot accelerate deployment without a larger supply. The city had only about 53,000 first doses left on Sunday.
De Blasio said the best way to deal with racial disparities is to increase the city’s supply so that more New Yorkers get the vaccine and the authorities can “gain confidence organically” among residents who are reluctant to get the vaccine.
“I honestly believe that this is the best cure for this problem,” he said. The mayor set a goal to vaccinate five million New Yorkers by June.
The city’s demographics are flawed – the mayor said that many people did not report their race and some health care providers did not collect them correctly. The race of the 263,000 people who received at least one dose of the vaccine was unknown.
But for those who provided their information, white residents, who make up about 32 percent of the city’s population, were overrepresented. Asians were represented in about their share of the city’s population: about 14 percent of New York City residents are Asians and 15 percent of those vaccinated are.
New Yorkers complained about the complex system of scheduling appointments and long waiting times on telephone lines. Younger people have helped older relatives to secure an appointment, and some appointments have been canceled because the city’s supply has been cut.
The data showed that at least 94,000 people living outside the city were vaccinated in New York. Mr. de Blasio defended this trend, saying that many of those vaccinated work in the city. Among the people outside the city who were shot, the racial divide was even greater: about 59% were white and 7% were black.
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Answers to your vaccine questions
Currently, more than 150 million people – almost half the population – can be vaccinated. But each state makes the final decision about who goes first. The country’s 21 million health workers and three million residents in long-term care facilities were the first to qualify. In mid-January, federal authorities urged all states to open eligibility for all people aged 65 and over and adults of any age with medical conditions that put them at high risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid-19. . Adults in the general population are at the rear of the line. If federal and state health officials can resolve bottlenecks in vaccine distribution, all 16 years and older will be eligible as early as this spring or early summer. The vaccine has not been approved in children, although studies are ongoing. It may take months before a vaccine is available to anyone under the age of 16. Go to your state’s health website for up-to-date information on vaccination policies in your area
You should not have to pay anything out of your pocket to get the vaccine, although insurance information is requested. Even if you do not have insurance, you should receive the vaccine free of charge. Congress passed legislation this spring that prohibits insurers from applying any cost sharing, such as copayment or deductibles. He imposed additional protections, preventing pharmacies, doctors and hospitals from charging patients, including those without insurance. Even so, health experts fear that patients may run into loopholes that leave them vulnerable to unexpected bills. This can happen for those who are charged a medical consultation fee along with their vaccine, or Americans who have certain types of health coverage that do not fall under the new rules. If you get the vaccine at a doctor’s office or urgent care clinic, talk to them about possible hidden costs. To make sure you don’t get a surprise bill, the best bet is to get your vaccine at a vaccination post in the health department or at a local pharmacy as soon as the vaccines are more widely available.
This must be determined. It is possible that Covid-19 vaccines will become an annual event, as well as the flu vaccine. Or it may be that the benefits of the vaccine last for more than a year. We have to wait to see how durable vaccine protection is. To determine this, the researchers will screen vaccinated people for “innovative cases” – those who fall ill with Covid-19 despite the vaccination. This is a sign of weakened protection and will give researchers clues as to how long the vaccine lasts. They will also monitor the levels of antibodies and T cells in the blood of vaccinated people to determine if and when a booster injection may be needed. It is conceivable that people need reinforcements every few months, once a year or just every few years. It is just a matter of waiting for the data.
The mayor said the city would eventually release additional data by postal code to give a better idea of who is being vaccinated.
After the city reported on a vaccination site in Manhattan where many foreigners were receiving doses, the health care network that runs the site agreed last week to prioritize residents of the local community and give new vacancies to New Yorkers only. .
Mr de Blasio said the problems at the site, the Armory Vaccination Center in Washington Heights – where almost 70% of residents are Latino – were “just the opposite of what we need”.
“If a website is in a community, particularly a community hard hit by Covid, the goal should be to reach that community and bring people in,” said de Blasio last week.
Mark Levine, a councilor who chairs the Council’s health committee, called for several steps to close what he called a “vaccine equality gap”, including giving residents of local zip codes priority of scheduling in communities of color.
“We need to act now to correct yet another flagrant case of inequality in this pandemic,” said Levine.
Several other candidates running to replace Mr. de Blasio as mayor criticized the vaccination efforts. Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, said the data was “a damning accusation of how the system is broken”.
Eric Adams, the district president of Brooklyn, said the city’s response to the virus “became our Katrina” – a reference to the hurricane that hit New Orleans in 2005 and overwhelmingly harmed black residents.
“We know who is most at risk and who is suffering the most – and they are mostly black and brown,” he said. “They were abandoned and are dying because of that. This should end today. “