According to the city’s demographics released Sunday, more than three-to-one white New Yorkers who received the coronavirus vaccine are more than Asian and Latino recipients and more than four-to-one black recipients.
“The information we have shows a marked disparity,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a City Hall press conference. “What we see is a very distinct reality that many more people from white communities are getting vaccinations than people from black and Latino communities.”
Of the 297,166 adult urban residents who received at least one dose of the two-dose vaccine and who provided racial demographics, 48 percent are white, according to the numbers, current as of Sunday morning.
Asian and Latino communities each comprise about 15 percent of the vaccine recipients who provided their race, while black New Yorkers make up about 11 percent of the pool.
Ten percent of recipients who submitted their race identified themselves as ‘other’.
However, about 40 percent of vaccine recipients did not provide racial data.
The difference is even greater in the elderly, who are among the most susceptible to the deadly virus.
Of vaccine recipients aged 65 or older who provided racial data, 58 percent are White, compared with 13 percent Latino, 11 percent Asian, and 9 percent Black.
The mayor blamed a combination of mistrust in the vaccine among minority communities and greater easy access to the shots for white New Yorkers.
“We have a serious problem of mistrust and hesitation, especially in color communities,” he said. “We clearly have a problem of privileges, where people who are privileged can access it [vaccines] with greater ease.
“We need to have a more systematic approach to ensure that we focus on the places where the danger is greatest,” de Blasio continued.
Data released at the height of the pandemic, organized by zip code, showed that the coronavirus was disproportionately affecting poor and minority neighborhoods.
The city will also release vaccine demographics in the coming days, sorted by zip code, de Blasio said.
To help improve access, de Blasio announced a series of steps, including tweaking the city’s maligned planning website and adding more vaccination sites in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, particularly in connection with developments in NYCHA.
He also said hospital application forms for the vaccine – which, as The Post noted last week, were only available in English and Spanish – would soon be available in many other languages: Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Haitian Creole, French, Korean, Polish , Russian and Simplified Chinese.
The data released Sunday also includes a breakdown of recipients who came from the five boroughs versus rural areas.
Three quarters of the partially vaccinated are urban residents, compared to 25 percent who live outside the city.
Of those who are fully vaccinated, 72 percent are urban residents, compared to 28 percent from elsewhere.
However, the “vast majority” of vaccinated non-city residents are civil servants, including police and firefighters, de Blasio said.
Even if the vaccine was distributed fairly, a pronounced shortage of shots has plagued the city and the state in recent times, which has led to the postponement of tens of thousands of appointments and the temporary closure of vaccination centers in the city.