Photographer: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
Photographer: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
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More than a quarter of people who receive the Covid-19 vaccine in New York City are non-residents, and tend to be younger and more likely to be white than people living in the city.
About 59% of recipients outside the city are white, according to data released Friday by the city’s health department. In comparison, 48% of New Yorkers who received vaccines are white, the data show. Approximately half of vaccinated non-residents are under the age of 65, compared with 44% of New Yorkers who get the vaccines. New York City has prioritized health professionals, the elderly and professionals essential to immunization.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the end of last month that the initial New York City data show “Deep” racial disparities in whoever received the vaccine. White residents represent almost half of the people who received at least one dose, although they consist of only one third of the population. Latinos, 29% of the population, account for 15% of those vaccinated. The lowest proportion was among black residents, who represent almost a quarter of the city’s population, but represented only 11% of those vaccinated.
Many of the non-residents being vaccinated are health professionals, first responders and others who do essential jobs in New York City, and the city wants them to be immunized. What the city wants to protect itself from, Blasio said, is that young people and non-essential workers take advantage of New York City’s vaccine supply because of the delays and shortages where they live.
“If someone is from outside the five districts, they are not a health professional, first aid, teacher or essential employee in New York City, they should not be given an injection in New York City,” Blasio said at a news conference on 12 January. “They should have an injection at their local vaccination centers.”
Critics say the Blasio government must still do more to equalize access to the vaccine.
“Blacks, Latinos and Asian New Yorkers – who have kept this city running for the past 11 months and have been the largest number of deaths and have suffered the economic impact of this crisis – have no access to register, let alone receive the vaccine, while wealthy. outside the city they have gathered in our city, depleting our limited supply of vaccines, ”said Maya Wiley, a candidate for mayor of New York who served as De Blasio’s chief legal counsel.
On Friday, the city opened Yankee Stadium for exclusive vaccine appointments for people in the Bronx, one of the most affected and most diverse neighborhoods in the city. “We want to make sure that this is only for the people of the Bronx,” said de Blasio during a radio interview on Friday. “It is part of a way to create equity.”
Criticism has grown both in the city and across the country about the fairness of vaccine distribution. Although preliminary city data is incomplete, it tends to show that black and Hispanic residents are behind white people in vaccination. In New York City, race and ethnicity are unknown to 39% of vaccine recipients. The US also lacks this demographic information for half the doses administered so far, according to data released on Monday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of February 1, 29,000 doses have been administered to people living in New Jersey and Connecticut, said de Blasio. He did not say how many shots were fired at New York state residents living outside the city. In Friday’s radio interview, de Blasio said the city planned to start releasing postal code information to recipients of the vaccine to provide transparency on residence status.
More Americans received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine than tested positive for the virus on February 1, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. The tracker is also capturing data from states and major cities on race, sex and age, when available.