Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci stressed the need to address racial disparities in the COVID-19 vaccination process in an interview with The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.
What it says: “I think that’s the only thing we have to be really careful about. We don’t want to at first … most people who receive it are different, well, white middle-class people.”
“You really want to give to people who are really the most vulnerable … you don’t want to have a situation where people who really need it, because of where they are, where they live, what their economic status is, that they don’t have access to the vaccine. “
- “It simply came to our notice then hesitation of the minority population. They keep coming back and telling Tuskegee’s story, “Biden’s chief physician said, referring to a 1930s situation in which the federal government denied Alabama black men treatment for syphilis and secretly documented how which disease has destroyed their bodies over the decades.
- “I do not, I cannot and should not forget about it, because it happened and it was a shame. “
- Biden’s chief medical officer remarked that health officials need to convince people of color “that the guarantees that have been put in place since then … would make it essentially impossible for a situation in Tuskegee to arise again. “
The whole picture: In the 16 states that published race vaccination data, white residents were vaccinated at rates that are often two to three times higher than black residents, writes Caitlin Owens of Axios.
- Black people are at higher risk of contracting coronavirus and also have higher COVID-related death rates than white people.
- Colored communities also tend to have fewer pharmacies per capita, making vaccination more difficult and not trusting the process due to past medical negligence.
- Immigrants who do not speak English fluently face additional barriers to access.
Go deeper: Colored communities lagging behind in the U.S. vaccination effort