In the United States, the majority of Covid vaccines have been administered to the white population, to the detriment of Latinos and African Americans.
After some initial hiccups, the vaccination campaign is now proceeding at a fairly swift pace in the United States. Every day, doctors and healthcare workers are administering more than one and a half million injections, a figure in line with the goal set by new president Joe Biden of administering 100 million doses in the first 100 days of his term.
At the same time, however, data and surveys reveal that vaccination procedures are following the same lines as the social inequalities embedded in American society, privileging the white population at the expense of Latinos and, especially, African Americans.
A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (Kff) broke down vaccination data by patients' ethnicity, then compared the results with the number of Covid-19 cases recorded across different groups, the death toll, and the demographic composition of the various states. In many cases, the vaccinations received by African Americans are markedly lower, in percentage terms, than those of the white population.
In Pennsylvania, for example, Black citizens make up 11 per cent of the total, yet have so far had access to only 3 per cent of doses. By comparison, white people account for 80 per cent of the population and have received 92 per cent of vaccinations. The situation is similar in North Carolina: the Black community (21 per cent of the total) has received 12 per cent of vaccinations, while white people (who make up 68 per cent of the population) have received 81 per cent of the injections administered to date.
The data are, however, partial: only 23 American states regularly report precise figures on the ethnicities of vaccinated individuals, and each one uses different criteria for counting doses or dividing people into ethnic groups. At the national level, a report released on 5 February by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cdc) states that, since the vaccination campaign began, African Americans have received only 5.4 per cent of doses, compared with 11.5 per cent for Hispanics and 39.6 per cent for white people. Here too, though, the data are incomplete: information on ethnic breakdowns is available for only 52 per cent of those vaccinated.
In 2018, more than half of the Black community (51 per cent) held jobs considered essential or that, in any case, cannot be performed remotely, compared with 41 per cent of white workers. With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ability to work from home became a privilege that amplified social differences. Today, essential workers carry out tasks that are as important as they are dangerous, and are exposed to a markedly greater risk of contracting the virus. For this reason — among others — African Americans are infected at 1.4 times the rate of white people, and the number of deaths linked to the new coronavirus is almost three times higher.
The African American community is, on the other hand, also the group that has shown the greatest reluctance towards vaccines. In September 2020, nearly half of African Americans said they had no intention of getting vaccinated against Covid-19. That figure then dropped to 35 per cent in December, but remains higher than the national average (27 per cent).
The main concerns are possible side effects and the fact that the vaccines were approved too quickly. According to 54 per cent of Black people, politics played an excessive role in all processes related to their development.
The African American community's distrust of Covid-19 vaccines is just one symptom of a far broader problem, one rooted in centuries of abuse. Today, many Black citizens still find it difficult to find a doctor who shares their cultural and social experiences, and many — especially women with children — say they do not feel heard or respected by the healthcare system because of the colour of their skin.
Several episodes have contributed to eroding the trust of the Black population in the American healthcare system. In 1932, for example, the American public health service and the Tuskegee Institute conducted a study on 600 Black men from Alabama, 399 of whom had syphilis. The patients, however, were unaware of their condition: the doctors had told them they had been selected because of their "bad blood" (bad blood), a catch-all term used for various ailments, and they never received the treatments they actually needed. The study ran for forty years, until the Associated Press news agency exposed what had happened. In 1972, another study revealed that in the preceding years at least two thousand African American women had been subjected to sterilisation procedures without their free consent.
Low trust in the healthcare system, combined with systemic racism and a general lack of representation at the top of institutions across all sectors, are factors that contribute to fostering a sense of mistrust towards Covid-19 vaccines within the African American community. It is precisely for this reason that several organisations are today working hard to strengthen trust and improve access to the new vaccines, so that no one is left behind in the fight against the pandemic.