CHICAGO (AP) – At a makeshift vaccination center at a Chicago safety net hospital, a patient service assistant gives entry to an elderly woman with a cane to a curtained cubicle.
“Here, have a seat here,” Trenese Bland says kindly, preparing the woman for a shot that offers protection against the virus that has ravaged her black community. But the helper has doubts about his own inoculation.
“Right now I don’t trust that,” says Bland, 50, who is concerned about how quickly COVID-19 vaccines were developed. “It’s not something I want in me.”
Only 37% of the 600 doctors, nurses and support staff at Roseland Community Hospital have been vaccinated even though health workers are first in line. Many starting points come from working-class neighborhoods, mostly black, that surround the hospital, areas heavily affected by the virus, but plagued by vaccine reluctance.
The irony has not escaped the organizers of a vaccination campaign at the 110-bed hospital, which until recently was flooded with coronavirus patients. If seeing COVID-19 up close and personal is not enough to convince people to get vaccinated, what will it do?
Resistance confuses Dr. Tunji Ladipo, an emergency physician who has seen the disease ravage countless patients and their families, and frequently works side-by-side with unvaccinated colleagues.
“Why don’t people who work in the health field trust science? I don’t understand it,” he said.
Health experts have stressed the safety of vaccines, noting that their development was unusually rapid, but based on years of previous research and those used in the US have shown no signs of serious side effects. in studies of tens of thousands of people. But the history of abuse has helped distrust the medical establishment of some black Americans.
In a recent survey by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 57% of black Americans said they had received at least one shot or planned to be vaccinated, compared to 68% of white Americans.
Black Americans surveyed by the National Infectious Diseases Foundation cited reasons for hesitation that echo those of Roseland employees.
The quiet, five-story red-brick hospital opened its doors nearly a century ago on the South Side end of Chicago. Next to a shopping center, a car parts store and a petrol station, the back garden is a residential street marked by built-in houses and three-storey apartment buildings.
Doctors, nurses and staff are almost all black, as are patients.
It would be hard to imagine anyone unaware of the unmatched health inequalities affecting the city’s black community and others across the country.
Blacks make up 30% of Chicago’s population, but at the start of the pandemic, more than half of deaths from COVID-19. This gap has narrowed, although there are disparities in diseases that explain why the risk persists, including high rates of high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity. Blacks are more likely to have jobs that do not provide health insurance or the luxury of working from home safely in a pandemic.
South Side neighborhoods lagged behind the richest whites in obtaining COVID-19 test sites and recent city data show that vaccines against COVID-19 in black and Latino residents are far behind white residents.
Without enough consumers among hospital workers, Roseland has offered some of its doses to city police and bus drivers. Hospital representatives are looking for ways to raise awareness and increase their vaccination rates: posters, stickers, educational sessions.
They even recently brought in veteran civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson to get his first shot on camera.
“African Americans have been the first to fall victim to the crisis, they cannot be the last to seek a remedy,” Jackson said before his inoculation.
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a U.S. black government scientist who helped develop the Moderna vaccine, accompanied Jackson. He acknowledged “centuries of medical injustice” against black Americans, but said COVID-19 vaccines were the result of years of solid research. He said confidence in these vaccines is necessary to save lives.
Rhonda Jones, a 50-year-old nurse at the hospital, has treated many patients with severe COVID-19, a relative died because of it, and her mother and nephew were infected and recovered, but she continues to endure. .
The vaccines “came out too quickly” and have not been properly tested, he said. He doesn’t rule out getting vaccinated, but soon.
“I always tell my patients, just for a doctor to ask you for medication, you have to ask for it; don’t take it just because, “Jones said.” Nursing school teachers always told us to take a look if in doubt. ”
At the beginning of the pandemic, the hospital cafeteria closed for two months when a worker became infected. However, the hospital’s administrator, Elio Montenegro, said that when he asked the cafeteria staff about vaccination, “each person said, ‘No, I’m not.’
Adam Lane, a cook, said he does not trust the U.S. government. He thinks political pressure drove vaccines to market and fears that those given to black communities are different and riskier than those offered to whites.
“I am tired of COVID. I think we just want it to end, “Lane said.” But I don’t want to lose my soul over a quick vaccine. “
Dr. Rita McGuire, an obstetrician and infection control specialist in Roseland, says combating misinformation and mistrust about vaccinations is a daily battle. Many workers “have not forgotten about these studies in which they used us as experiments,” McGuire said, including Tuskegee’s infamous research. in black patients with syphilis.
Many also worry about the serious side effects of the vaccine, but these are extremely rare, McGuire tells them.
Some say they will wait until spring or summer to get vaccinated. With infection rates still high and the emergence of more contagious virus variants, “it’s too late,” McGuire said.
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Follow AP medical writer Lindsey Tanner on @LindseyTanner.
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The Associated Press Department of Science and Health receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.