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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that only 5.4% of coronavirus vaccine recipients were black, in their initial analysis of how vaccines were distributed to different demographics in the first month of distribution in the U.S.
That’s lower than the percentage of black people who either live in long-term care homes in the US (14%) or work in healthcare (16%). Both belonged to the highest priority groups for immunization.
However, the federal health agency stressed that its analysis was hampered by a lack of data. While the 64 states and territories and five federal jurisdictions that conducted vaccination reported age and gender in nearly all cases, just over half of the data included race or ethnicity data.
“More complete reporting of race and ethnicity data at the supplier and jurisdiction level is critical to ensure rapid detection and response to potential differences in vaccination with Covid-19,” the researchers wrote.
More than 97% of the data the CDC received contained information about age and 99.9% contained information about gender. However, just over half, 51.9%, of the data included an entry for race or ethnicity.
Furthermore, researchers said the variation in the state’s distribution plans weakened their analysis. States like Florida and Texas have rapidly expanded vaccine eligibility criteria to more than health professionals and the medically vulnerable, to many people over the age of 65.
The CDC study looked at data from more than 12.9 million vaccinations in the US between December 14, 2020 and January 14, 2021. The period spans the weeks immediately after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Pfizer approved vaccines.
Of the recipients whose race was known, 60.4% were White, 11.5% Latino, 6% Asian, 5.4% Black, and 14.4% reported multiple identities. Of those records, only 6.7 million had information about race and ethnicity.
Black people in the US are 1.5 times as likely to die from Covid-19 as Caucasians, and Latino people are 1.2 times as likely to die, the Covid Tracking Project found.
Independent analyzes also found “red flags” in the race and ethnicity data sheets. A recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 17 states reported such data. In comparison, 51 states and territories now report racial and ethnic data on deaths, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Black and Latino people in the US got sick and died disproportionately from Covid-19, in part because of stratified inequalities and decades-old policies that have made these groups more vulnerable to Covid-19.
For example, Black Americans are nearly twice as likely as White Americans to develop type 2 diabetes in their lifetime, a risk factor for serious complications from Covid-19. At the same time, black and Latino workers are over-represented in key, low-wage jobs, where it is often difficult to distance themselves socially.
Researchers have linked health inequalities to a variety of factors as systemic as housing segregation, once institutionalized as racist US government policies, and as interpersonal as discrimination by healthcare providers.
The dramatic impact of Covid-19 on black and Latino people in the US reduced life expectancy at birth by two and three years, respectively, according to a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In comparison, whites lost 0.68 years of life expectancy at birth.