Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday morning, the latest in a series of public officials whose shots were broadcast on TV in an effort to boost confidence in vaccines against the coronavirus.
“I ask everyone, when it is your turn, to get vaccinated. It’s about saving your life, the lives of your family and the life of your community, ”said Harris.
She received the first dose of the vaccine by Patricia Cummings, a nurse and Guyanese immigrant, from the United Medical Center in Washington, DC.
“I want to remind people that it is right in your community where you can get the vaccine, where you will get the vaccine, from people you may know,” she said. “People who are working in the same hospital where their children were born. People who are working in the same hospital where an elderly relative received the kind of care they needed.”
Harris is the most prominent black and Asian officer who has been vaccinated live on TV so far. Infection and mortality rates in the United States are much higher in communities of color – especially among blacks, indigenous people and Latinos – than among whites. Mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed and approved in record time, is also prevalent among communities of color, who have a history of ill-treatment and medical abuse.
On a interview on MSNBC last week, Harris acknowledged caution about the vaccine among people of color.
“When we look, in particular, when we talk about racial demographics in terms of impact, blacks, Latinos, our indigenous brothers and sisters are much more likely to contract COVID and die because of it,” she said. “I will invest as much as I can to help people trust what public health experts are telling us [about the vaccine]. “
President-elect Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci, Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress have also been vaccinated in recent weeks, along with frontline health professionals.
Even with the nationwide vaccination campaign well underway, the United States is at a terrible point in the pandemic, with infection rates rising and hospitalizations and deaths overloading facilities and depleting health workers.
Nearly 20 million people in the United States have had the coronavirus and more than 335,000 people have died. An unknown number of people who survived are still struggling with long-term health problems months after being infected.