New CDC data obtained by Kaiser Health News (KHN) has found that African Americans’ COVID vaccination rates are still lagging since the campaign started, while Hispanics and Native Americans are showing good rates overall.
The CDC data offers a national look into the race and ethnicity of vaccinated people. It has been found that nearly half of those vaccination records are missing race or ethnicity information, according to CNN.
The analysis by KHN has shown that only 22% of African Americans have received a shot. Hispanics are closing the gap, while Native Americans have reached the highest rates.
Despite these racial disparities, the CDC said those who are fully vaccinated against COVID do not need to wear masks in most indoor and outdoor settings. So far, only 38% of Americans are fully vaccinated.
Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California-San Francisco said, “Every day we do not reach a person or a community is a day in which there is a preventable COVID case that happens and a preventable COVID death in these communities.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director, American Public Health Association, said he was not surprised that Black Americans’ vaccination rates were still lagging, referring to reasons such as access issues, hesitancy, and structural inequity.
He said, “We’re going to be judged whether or not we did it equitably at the end of the day. Right now, I still think we’re failing.”
The vaccination rates for Native Americans have surpassed those of Whites in some states, but that infrastructure does not exist for African Americans, according to Rhonda BeLue, the department chair of health management policy at Saint Louis University.
She said, “At the beginning of the pandemic, people were shocked by how much more likely Black Americans were to die from COVID-19. However, the same structural inequities that caused that disproportionate mortality in Covid-19 are the same structural inequities that predated Covid-19 and caused disproportionate burdens of morbidity and mortality. This isn’t new.”
Race or ethnicity information on vaccinated people is still missing in the CDC data, despite vows by federal authorities to improve outdated systems, according to CNN.
Dr. Bibbins-Domingo said the government should make collecting this vaccination data by race mandatory, as data helps the response to the pandemic.
She said, “The feds know how to do this. They do it every 10 years for the census. That we somehow cannot figure it out in public health data is quite simply unacceptable.” The story was published on CNN.
