Black Californians, who have a litany of historical reasons to mistrust public health officials and doctors, have the lowest vaccination rate in the state, at 55%
And while statewide deaths from COVID have declined in the past week, they have continued to rise for African Americans.Dr. Kim Rhoads, an associate professor of epidemiology at University of California, San Francisco, said she isn’t surprised by the growing death rate among African Americans. “Disparities aren’t new. They aren’t new to COVID,” said Rhoads, who helped organize the community clinic where Moore got his shot.
The increased share of deaths for Black Californians is a powerful sign of “who was left behind when everyone else was kind of moving on out of the pandemic,” Riley said. Substantial gains have been made among Latinos, according to Riley’s study. After bearing the brunt in the early stages, Latinos’ death rate dropped from nearly 25 deaths per 100,000 people in January 2021 to 1 death per 100,000 in July. Over the last month, the7.2 Latinos died of COVID per 100,000 people, lower than the statewide rate of 8 per 100,000.
COVID-19 “touched people close to home. I think that also created an impulse for people to get information from reliable sources and get the vaccine.”Rhoads said refocusing COVID-19 vaccination messaging on preventing deaths rather than infections is important for equity, particularly since getting her community to trust the vaccine has been harder.
With mask restrictions loosening, the Umoja Health clinic in Oakland has seen less demand for vaccines and COVID-19 testing. Photo by Marissa Leshnov for CalMatters