Early numbers on Chicago’s vaccine rollout show extra effort is a must on South and West sides

On Dec. 15, health care workers across Chicago began receiving the city’s first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Quickly, a potentially troubling pattern emerged.

Within days, doctors and other health care workers from high-income, largely white communities near downtown and on the North Side showed up in large numbers to get shots at the hospitals where they work. By Dec. 26, the greatest number of vaccinations citywide were of doctors and other health care workers from the Near North Side and in Lake View, Lincoln Park, South Loop and Wicker Park, an analysis by the Sun-Times’ Brett Chase and Elvia Malagón found.

But for workers living in lower income and working class neighborhoods of color on the South and West sides, the picture looked much different. From Dec. 15 through 26, the fewest vaccinations in the city were of health care workers from the mostly Black Far South Side; and from West Lawn, Chicago Lawn and Belmont Cragin, neighborhoods with large Latino populations. Both areas have among the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the city.

The analysis is a stark reminder of the extra effort that will be needed to ensure high rates of vaccination for communities of color.

Chicago and Illinois cannot beat back COVID-19 and end the pandemic unless vaccination becomes the rule, not the exception, in every part in our city.

Indeed, every Chicagoan who is ready and willing to be vaccinated — starting with front-line workers — has a role to play in learning some of the science behind vaccines and, in turn, persuading reluctant family and friends to get their shots.

As Dr. Marina Del Rios, the director of social emergency medicine at University of Illinois Health and the first Chicagoan to be vaccinated, told the Sun-Times: “There’s a lot of mistrust that has to be addressed even among people in the health care field.”

We’re hoping that city officials are proven correct in the coming weeks, when they predict that the numbers will become more equitable.

On Monday, health care workers at Esperanza Health Center, which serves the Latino community on the Southwest Side, became the first Chicagoans to receive the Moderna vaccine. Public rollouts like that can be a powerful public information tool, experts have said.

“We’re following up now with all 35 of our hospitals to say ‘How much of your staff have you gotten through?’” Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Monday. “We’re working on an individual level with each hospital to make sure that we’re not just talking about doctors and nurses, that we’re talking about the whole range of health care professionals who work in that hospital setting.”

Outreach to the community

But no one can lose sight of the hard and necessary work still to come. That’s especially true for Black Americans. They are at the highest risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19 yet, according to polls, are consistently more reluctant than whites or Latinos to take a coronavirus vaccine.

The experience of Black health care workers — be they doctors, nurses, lab technicians, janitors or cafeteria staffers — can make a big difference in persuading skeptics.

And potentially, saving their lives.

Chicago and Illinois have their own vaccine distribution plans. Chicago’s includes a strategy to pair health care workers who have been vaccinated with local leaders to help build trust in the community as a whole.

Meanwhile, Illinois is among those states that have a large Black population but no clear, specific strategy for vaccine outreach to Black residents, a ProPublica investigation has found. The state plans to work with community leaders, urging them to get vaccinated publicly and to explain why they trust the vaccine, a spokesperson tells us.

There’s no time to waste, as David Hodge, associate director of education at Tuskegee University’s National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, points out to ProPublica. He’s urging Black and Brown leaders to take action now.

“We’re not in a position right now to be patient,” Hodge said. “We’re not in a position to sit on the sidelines. We have to make it happen.”

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