As the Delta variant infects more Louisiana residents, data shows African Americans still lag in terms of vaccination rates. The Louisiana Department of Health’s data says blacks make up 29.28% of the vaccines administered compared to 58.4% for whites.
Dr. Thomas LaVeist is Dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University and co-Chair of the Louisiana COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. LaVeist says the task force is working to educate more people about the safety of the three authorized vaccines.
LaVeist said some people are hesitant while others are vaccine-resistant.
“When you start talking to people about what their, why they are not vaccinated we find different categories of reasons and so there are really different types of people, so we’re trying to become more nuanced in the way we message to attract different people and message to those different objections,” said LaVeist. “A lot of them have legitimate questions like how did you create a vaccine in 10 months when normally it takes more than 10 years, those are legitimate questions that we can answer, is it safe, you know, we have emergency use authorization, but FDA has not given full approval, so what does that mean? We can answer those questions and in many cases when we answer those questions people are satisfied and they’re willing to get vaccinated,” LaVeist stated.
In New Orleans, blacks are 60% of the population and blacks are 43.9% of the vaccinations completed by race which is slightly higher than whites at 43.0. In Jefferson Parish which sits just outside of New Orleans only 22 percent of blacks are vaccinated compared to 60% of whites.
Overall, vaccinations in the state are increasing as the Delta variant has coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations soaring. “It is encouraging. I think one of the things that I’m noticing, we are getting more willing to accept the vaccine. I think some of that is that people are getting those questions answered satisfactorily and they’re coming to understand more about the safety and the effectiveness of the vaccine,” LaVeist said.
The vaccines are safe and effective. “We know that we’ve had over 600,000 Americans die from the virus, right? So, the risk of the vaccine is far less than the risk of the virus and it just seems to me that taking your chances with the virus is just not a smart decision,” LaVeist.
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