COVID-19 hit Blacks in Miami-Dade hard. Remove their hurdles to getting the vaccine | Editorial
When, as president, Joe Biden brings the kind of cohesive COVID guidance that has been missing — fatally so — for almost a year, he must include a special focus on the underserved Black, Hispanic and Native American communities that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic.
In his push to shift the raucous and chaotic national conversation Biden was wise to form a task force focused on getting residents of these vulnerable communities tested and vaccinated. The task force will be led by Marcella Nunez-Smith, a respected voice on healthcare disparities. The federal-level focus is vital, and overdue.
Americans among these populations have a COVID mortality rate up to three times that of white Americans. Many have the kinds of jobs they can’t do remotely; they can’t afford to quarantine if they want to play the bills; they have underlying health conditions exacerbated by the coronavirus; they are at the mercy of the digital divide — especially seniors — sometimes without the computers to access the deluge of vital COVID information online.
It stands to reason, unfortunately, that these same citizens are already often out of the loop and lagging behind when it comes to getting vaccinated against the coronavirus. South Florida and, in particular, Miami-Dade, follow the national pattern.
Better coordination
“There’s no real organization,” Dr. Cheryl Holder, a professor at the Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, told the Editorial Board, recently. “We need coordinated delivery, mobile units, evening sites. Hospitals are not always easily accessible.”
Holder said that barely 10 percent of eligible African-American residents have been vaccinated. “If you going to expect equitable distribution, churches and schools must be involved. That how it was done with polio vaccines.”
She said, “35 percent of residents in Liberty City and Little Haiti don’t own cars. Many work two jobs. They can’t do 8 to 5,” referring to the hours that vaccinations most often are available.
“We should be working as a collaborative with community. . . . This can’t be a top down from the government. This has to be the community coming together to make sure the highest-risk folks are vaccinated.”
Holder cites an additional hurdle that medical professionals and community-based organizations must clear if many Black and immigrant residents are going to get vaccinated: distrust. Black Americans are schooled in the disgrace of the Tuskegee experiment, in which African-American men were intentionally infected with syphilis — and never told — in the name of science. Black Americans are aware of forced sterilizations of Black women in the past and biased medical professionals who, even in the 21st century, give them a lesser standard of care.
Cultural beliefs
In some immigrant communities the belief in natural remedies can run deep, bolstered by the fear that something developed in the lab, and not grown on and plucked from a tree, can’t be of any use.
These are serious, legitimate concerns — and Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s administration and the County Commission are addressing them with common-sense initiatives to get information, testing and vaccinations to vulnerable, underresourced residents.
County Commissioner Kionne McGhee has just been appointed chair of the commission’s Health, Emergency Management and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. Commissioner Rene Garcia is co-chair. Subduing COVID is Priority No. 1.
“One strategy to reach the underserved will be to reach out to all the community action agencies and the community-based organizations. The goal is to empower them to inform us as to the best strategy of reaching the people they are currently serving,” McGhee told the Editorial Board.
“These groups already are responsible for dealing with low-income housing and food disparities, dealing with everyone who meets that poverty threshold,” he said. “The important thing is, they already have the data that they need and the population that we’re trying to reach.”
Vaccine shortage
He cited a vaccination event for senior citizens scheduled to take place Sunday at a church in Richmond Heights, and said that more will be planned in other districts. He, along with Levine Cava, said mobile vaccination units are being deployed to public housing complexes, depending on availability of the vaccine.
“There is a shortage of vaccines,” McGhee said. “I’m now working with the state’s emergency management director, Jared Moskowitz, to vaccinate 500 individuals from these communities, working with DeSantis.”
This last is the most encouraging news out of Florida’s persistent mishandling of the pandemic since March. Levine Cava, too, confirms that the DeSantis administration — which the Editorial Board has criticized for almost a year for its missteps that not only have failed to keep people safe, but also alive — has been responsive and accessible.
“Moskowitz has given us advance notice for vaccination sites, so we can post it [on the county’s website]. He holds the cards when is comes to vaccine.” Levine also has been in conversation with Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, of the White House task force on the coronavirus.
The vaccine roll-out has been aggravating not just in Florida, but across the country. Miami-Dade leaders are right to realize that they, too, hold the cards to eradicating COVID in this community. They haven’t been dealt the best hand, but they are playing it well.
This story was originally published January 17, 2021 at 6:00 AM.