The LuLac Edition #4,529, June 2nd, 2021

 

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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This week we look at the vaccines for a future Co-Vid outbreak. Times Shamrock has a proactive approach to dealing with minorities in term of vaccine distribution.

PRIORITIZING MINORITIES FOR VACCINES FUNDAMENTAL FOR FUTURE HEALTH EMERGENCIES

Because the COVID-19 pandemic was the most serious public health emergency to strike the United States in more than 100 years, there was no ready game plan for local and state governments to deal with it — all the more so because there was no guidance from the federal government at the beginning of the crisis.

It’s clear now, as infections and death rates steadily fall, that the governments played catch-up from the onset of the crisis through distribution of the miraculous vaccines that have begun to claim control of the coronavirus.

A virtue of all of that brutal experience is that it can be used now to create models for dealing with future public health emergencies, which are inevitable even they do not match the scope of COVID-19.

Pennsylvania reported Friday that 73% of adults statewide had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and that it is now among 10 states in which at least 50% of adults have been immunized.

Meanwhile, the news organization Spotlight PA has conducted an analysis of the state’s vaccine distribution.

It found that 73% of Pennsylvanians outside of Philadelphia who have received at least one vaccine dose are white, whereas 4% are Black and 4% are Hispanic.

That reflects broader health care statistics, which tend to demonstrate less access to care among minority populations.

And it’s a particular problem regarding minority populations, because they tend to live in urban areas with greater population density and closer personal contact, and tend to work in service industries that entail direct contact with other people.

Dr. Usama Bilal, an assistant professor of epidemilogy and biostatistics at Drexel University, put it this way: “We’ll have a population with much lower vaccination rates and much higher exposures, so that’s going to be a very worrisome picture.”

As the state government examines the crisis with the aim of planning better for the next one, it should use the vaccine distribution experience to make greater targeting of minority populations, and community-specific outreach, fundamental to future state responses.