People of Color Should Be Prioritized in COVID Vaccination Rollout, Fauci Says

People who live in under-served communities, which often include Black and brown people, should receive prioritization in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday.

Speaking to The New England Journal of Medicine, the infectious disease expert and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden said that ensuring people in those communities have access to vaccine centers and pharmacies can be complicated.

“We don’t want in the beginning that most of the people who are getting (the vaccine) are otherwise, well, middle-class white people,” Fauci said in the interview. {snip}

So far, white people have been vaccinated at rates up to three times higher than Black people in the 16 states who have released vaccination data by racial demographics, Axios reported. This statistic comes despite months of reporting that Black and Latino Americans are dying from the disease at higher rates than white people, according to CNN.

But there remains a hesitancy among some people of color in getting the vaccine, based on a history of medical malpractice against their communities.

{snip}

Fauci previously said people of color are more likely to be in contact with people infected with COVID-19 because of their “employment, socioeconomic status (and) availability of jobs,” according to The American Journal of Managed Care.

“And then when they do get infected, given the social determinants of health which make … them have a higher incidence of diseases like hypertension, obesity, diabetes,” Fauci said of Black people, according to CNN. {snip}