Black and Latino communities are left behind in Covid-19 vaccination efforts

When vaccines became increasingly available throughout America, US health officials moved quickly to try to convince large numbers of Americans to get vaccinated. But amid the mass vaccination rollout, Black and Latino communities, who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, have been left behind in vaccination efforts, creating racial disparities about who was more likely to get a Covid-19 shot. Amid federal and local efforts to address vaccine disparity, vaccination rates for Black Americans and Latinos lag behind the general population, leaving many communities of color still unprotected against the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the 57% of Americans for which ethnicity data was available who have had at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, the majority are white while only about 15% are Hispanic and 9% are Black: both lower rates than their proportion of the US population. Fewer than half of US states have vaccinated more than a third of their Black populations, according to data provided by Bloomberg, while more than 40 states have done at least as well with white and Asian people.