The race to reach remaining unvaccinated communities, especially among Black and Latino residents, has become more urgent for health officials as new coronavirus strains appear.
One in particular, the delta variant of COVID-19, has health experts concerned for the remaining unvaccinated populations, many of whom work in jobs with constant face-to-face interaction, experts say.
From video game consoles, lottery entries and free Aquarium of the Pacific passes, Long Beach health officials have tried myriad ways to entice residents to get vaccinated. Officials have also implemented mobile and pop-up clinics in West, North and Central Long Beach to reach parts of the city that saw greater spread of the virus. Though the city’s efforts have achieved some success, data shows that more work needs to be done to inoculate hard to reach neighborhoods among communities of color.
Kelly Colopy, the city’s health department director, said the percentage of adults 18 years and over who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has more than doubled since the implementation of those mobile and pop-up clinics.
In March, the city saw 22.3% of Latinos and 18.7% of Black adults had received vaccines, according to the health department. As of Tuesday, 52.8% of Latinos and 41.4% Black residents had been vaccinated, Colopy said.
“These numbers remain below 67% for our White and Asian adult population and 71% of our Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander adult residents,” Colopy wrote in an email.
The group that continued seeing the slowest vaccination growth were residents between the ages of 18 and 34.
“Those are the folks who are often out and about more often,” Colopy said, “and we finally hit 50% of our 18 to 34 year olds.”
Vaccination inequities among Latino and Black residents are still apparent in Long Beach, with fewer residents in those groups getting vaccinated when compared to other groups in the city.
The same can be seen countywide. During a media briefing on Monday, Los Angeles County’s public health director Barbara Ferrer noted a lagging vaccination rate among the Black and Latino communities when compared to their White and Asian counterparts.
Black and Latino communities also continue to have the highest current rate of infections, hospitalizations and deaths, Ferrer said, noting that the current state of COVID-19 is “a pandemic of unvaccinated people.”
Dr. Elisa Nicholas from TCC Family Health oversees clinics in low-income communities in Long Beach. She and her staff have conducted several vaccination clinics, using volunteers to administer the shots. She said the work is important to her and her staff, but it can be taxing—especially when trying to reach the remaining pockets of families that have not been vaccinated.
“The end group is always the hardest,” Nicholas said. “I don’t think we should give up. I think there’s still misinformation.”
Delta variant
The lag in vaccinations among communities of color and individuals with only one of the two-shot vaccines has some health experts worried about the spread of a new COVID-19 variant.
Dr. Jorge Caballero, a medical researcher and anesthesiologist at Stanford Health Care, and a number of other doctors have been monitoring developments over the delta strain of COVID-19 that was first discovered in India. Reports originating from the United Kingdom on the delta variant suggest that the strain is more aggressive in how it affects people, Caballero said.
Caballero has been keeping a close eye on different variants of the virus that have sprung up in the last months, but nothing has brought him more concern than this new variant.
“What I’m seeing is this virus is adapting; it’s getting harder to protect against. It is affecting more people and we’re not recognizing that there is a clear present danger because we now have delta variants in the U.S.,” Caballero said. “I’m concerned. The trajectory of the rise is alarming—we’re talking about a highly transmissible disease.”
Health officials across the country were racing to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating about 70% of the population before July 4, however, some experts and even the White House believe that goal won’t be met in time. During a White House briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said 20.6% of new cases in the U.S. are due to the delta variant, NPR reported.
Colopy said the delta variant has not been found in Long Beach as of Thursday, but echoed Caballero’s worry.
“Our concern is that there could be outbreaks in those folks, in that population, and the discussion is that it makes people more ill,” Colopy said.
Caballero and other health experts say the remaining unvaccinated people are exposed to greater risks of becoming sick with the new variant.
“When we’re talking about the delta variant,” Caballero said, “the data that we are seeing thus far indicates that, really for all intents and purposes, if you only received one dose you might as well be unvaccinated.”
City News Service contributed to this report