NEW YORK (AP) — If there’s one place where people could fear the coronavirus more than a vaccination needle, it's the Far Rockaway section of Queens: Nearly 460 residents of the seaside neighborhood have died of Covid-19.
That's one out of every 146 people who live there, making for one of New York City's highest death rates. And yet, no other place in the city has a lower percentage of vaccinated people.
As of Monday, only 29% of people living Far Rockaway’s ZIP code, 11691, had received even one vaccine dose, according to data from the New York City Health Department. That compares to a rate of 49% citywide and nationally.
The situation in the community of around 67,000 people illustrates the challenges facing health officials in many places as they try to overcome hesitancy fueled by mistrust, misinformation and fear.
“We have a good amount of people that still don’t want to get vaccinated, for whatever reason,” said Diana Catalan, a health clinic manager involved in the Far Rockaway inoculation effort whose father, a neighborhood resident, died of the virus in February.
Some people want to wait a few months to see how vaccinated friends and family respond to the shots, she said. Some have heard unfounded conspiracy theories that the vaccine is dangerous. Others just feel no urgency, having escaped serious harm so far.
Catalan said she was anxious to get her father a shot at the Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center, where she works. But he got the virus before the vaccine became available to people in his age group. He was 62.
“He was very young and he had no chronic illnesses," Catalan said. “He was nothing but a hard-working man.”
More than an hour’s subway ride from Manhattan, Far Rockaway sits between a bay and a strip of urban beach on the eastern end of Queens seashore, beneath the flight path for nearby Kennedy Airport.
Like a lot of places where vaccination rates lag, a majority of residents are Black and Hispanic. Among some Black Americans, there's documented distrust in the medical establishment and government because of a history of discriminatory treatment.
“People are naturally going to be scared of anything offered by the medical community, especially because of what we’ve seen through health care and what that has looked like for low-income black and brown communities disadvantaged in the state,” Khaleel Anderson, a state Assembly member who represents the area explained.
For some Latinos, delaying the vaccine often comes down to logistics, such as work schedules or fear of negative immigration consequences. A section of the neighborhood is also home to a community of Orthodox Jews, a group that, like white evangelical Christians, is also experiencing more vaccine skepticism.
Initially developed in the 19th century as a beach resort community, Far Rockaway today is poorer than most parts of the city, a mix of public housing, seaside apartment towers and suburban-style single-family homes, all physically isolated. Its inoculation rate stands in stark contrast with the situation a few miles west in Breezy Point, a whiter, more affluent section of the Rockaway Peninsula where 75% of people have received their first dose.
“Far Rockaway is always the forgotten community,” said Michelle Chester, who was raised in the neighborhood and also happened to administer the very first Covid-19 vaccine dose in the state.
Local officials initially said limited access to vaccination sites is one factor contributing to the low numbers, though throughout May, there were at least four places where people were able to get shots in the 3 square miles (8 square kilometers) that constitute Far Rockaway. A large, state-run mass vaccination site is also just a few subway stops away, at Aqueduct Racetrack.