LOS ANGELES (CN) — The race to get a Covid-19 vaccine in Los Angeles is cutthroat and most people don’t even know they’re in the competition.
Over the last year, South Central and East LA have weathered the brunt of the pandemic as more Black and Latino residents died from the virus than any other groups in the county. A recent overview map from public health data shows underserved communities are alarmingly passed over in the vaccination rollout despite the best efforts from health agencies.
Instead, white and more affluent residents are in the lead. Over 47% of all white residents and 44% of Asian residents 65 and older in LA County have received at least one vaccine dose, while just 34% of Latinos and about 29% of Black residents from the same age group have received their first doses.
Outside the El Sereno Recreation Center in northeast LA, Wilma Dominguez from Montebello walks back to her car while windmilling her arm. Dominguez, 68, says in the first few weeks it was difficult to find an appointment online, but with her niece’s help over the phone she found one at the El Sereno walk-up site.
“I feel like I left my anxiety back there,” Dominguez said in Spanish, pointing back at the tent where she got her second Moderna vaccine shot.
Joanne Scheer, 71, from Altadena also got her second dose at the El Sereno site. She says she would have rather given her doses to a teacher so they could safely get back to school.
“I’m glad I’m done,” said Scheer. “I know that I’m not from the barrio, but there weren’t any places to get vaccinated in our own neighborhood.”
LA is not unique in clamoring for more vaccines. A global supply shortage is partly to blame for the slow rollout, but so are the historical health inequities that hang over LA County. Essential workers, mainly low-income residents from the hardest hit neighborhoods, continued to work outside the home during the pandemic while more affluent residents worked from home.
The vaccine rollout is like an echo of the pandemic.
In essence, the underserved communities are left again to find their own vaccines while other people with more time and resources reach over their heads.
“It was all predicted,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, clinical professor of preventative medicine at Keck School of Medicine at USC. “No one was surprised by the distribution of vaccines we see in California and Los Angeles.”
Klausner said public health officials should have taken a more aggressive approach to give more advantages to the disadvantaged. He calls this a form of reverse structural racism that would have educated and inoculated those residents at higher rates.
“There was no leadership that was working to address how you provide more resources to those neighborhoods,” Klausner said.
Consider that LA County is a small nation unto itself with 10 million residents and just one public health agency to oversee the mass inoculation effort. The county has administered nearly 2 million doses. The city of LA has also wandered into the public health effort and Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office says the city has administered 394,297 vaccines and an additional 9,300 given at nursing homes and fire stations.
The push to vaccinate has also shifted in recent weeks under the Biden administration, with federal agencies responding to the pandemic like a natural disaster and mounting a mass-vaccination hub at California State University, Los Angeles.
State and federal officials tried to tip the scales to reach low-income residents earlier this month, only to have the effort backfire. Specialized codes meant to reserve appointments for the low-income residents at the Romana Gardens Housing Development in Boyle Heights were widely shared and abused by people from outside those communities.