COVID Vaccines, and the Lack of Them in Poor Communities

Covid has been a very big problem for the world for over a year now, but thankfully we have a vaccine but there’s another problem, the lack of vaccinations in poor/minority-majority communities. While for richer communities getting a vaccine through the government is fairly easy, people from poorer communities usually have to seek out 3rd party options to get the vaccine. 

A close look at the vial which the Pfizer COVID Vaccine is held in

While the government, specifically in Connecticut, has been trying to push the vaccines out to lower communities and has even had quotas, such as allocating 25% of the vaccination to misfortuned, people still hand trouble getting the vaccine. This was because in reality only 20% were allocated to lower-income communities. This trend continued throughout the following weeks. Josh Geballe, The Operating officer of CT, said that the state is “narrowing that gap steadily,” but according to the Hartford Courant, “As of March 31, 42% of white adults had received at least one vaccine doses, compared with 23% of Black adults and 21% of Hispanic adults.” 

 

These low numbers are not only a problem because we have low numbers of vaccinations in poor communities, they are also a problem because now the government has to catch up with the pace of vaccinations being done in richer communities. The government also needs to bring out more vaccines to compensate for their loss and the trends seem to show that it will be a long while until the state meets the vaccine quota. The only way to seemingly solve this problem is for the state to keep the quota the same but the state has been constantly pushing the bar for vaccinations. But even with all this negative talk with vaccinations, there is still light at the end of the tunnel as more and more people start to get the vaccine and it is becoming more readily available to wider ranges of people.

I’m being given my second dose of the Pfizer COVID Vaccine by a nurse at the Connecticut Children’s Hospital

 Many folks say that the signing process for the vaccine is relatively easy. Students in Hall, such as Aidan Cattlean have said that there are a large number of websites providing the vaccine, some being 3rd party and some being government-owned. Mr.Fortuna said this about his experience at the vaccination sites he and his wife went to, “Both (vaccination) sites were really efficient, you got your shot at your appointment time, you waited 15 minutes so they could check and you and you were on your way.”  Many others also said that it was easy to find ways for their family members to also get vaccinated. We are very grateful to have the great vaccine procedures we have in CT as restrictions for covid start to lower, as in many other countries, such as Brazil they are struggling to push out the vaccines. And many students push others to get the vaccines because, as Aidan Cattelan said, “you can compare all the negative effects of coronavirus to the effects of the vaccines, and the effects of coronavirus is much much worse.”