A patchwork approach in states to both administering vaccines and reporting data on who is inoculated has left the federal government with significant blind spots and only partial control over who gets a shot. Incomplete data from states show that relatively lower proportions of Black and Latino populations have received injections, compared to White people.
In Philadelphia and Washington, Black people make up more than 40% of the population but just over 20% of vaccinated people for whom racial data is available, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. In Texas and California, Latinos make up 39% of the population but just 21% and 18% of those vaccinated, respectively. In Arizona, White people make up 55% of the population but have received 76% of vaccines.
Biden and his top advisers, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, have pressed for vaccinations to be equitable in a pandemic that has disproportionately ravaged communities of color. An equity task force, which sprung from a bill Harris once proposed, held its first meeting on Friday, where officials stressed the need for better data. But the administration has been hamstrung in its ability to address disparate distribution of shots across the country.
“It is critically important to have equity in vaccine distribution, because of everything we know about how disproportionate the impact of Covid-19 has been on communities of color,” said Lisa Cooper, a physician who directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. “We may not all be in the same boat, but we’re in the same storm — if other boats are capsizing, it’s not good for the rest of us.”
People of color — including American Indians, Alaska Native persons, Black people and Latinos — are roughly three to four times as likely to be hospitalized with Covid-19 than White people and roughly twice as likely to die of the disease, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
