Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day three forty since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story. As vaccines roll out across the US, logistics and supply are just some of the challenges in making sure everyone has equal access to the vaccine. One Boston health system is also confronting another major problem in vaccine distribution, a long history of racial inequity in the US healthcare system.
But first, here's what happened in Virus News today. Knew you York City may have to hold back as many as thirty five thousand vaccine appointments after severe winter storms across the nation delayed deliveries. That's according to Mayor Build a Blasio. The city currently has fewer than thirty thousand first doses on hand and could run out by the
end of the day. On Wednesday, South Africa will begin administering Johnson and Johnson's vaccine to health workers following the arrival of a first consignment of the shots on Tuesday night. The country has offered its supply of the Astrasennica Oxford vaccine to the African Union after it was found to have little effect on the variant first identified in the country. Late South Africa has recorded more than one point four nine million coronavirus cases, the most in Africa and finally
in New Zealand. Auckland's three day lockdown will end after authorities expressed confidence that the latest community outbreak is contained. Auckland moved to alert level too at midnight on Wednesday, allowing schools and businesses to reopen. The remainder of New Zealand has moved to Level one, meaning people no longer have to observe social distancing or limit the size of gatherings.
And now for today's main story, Distributing the coronavirus vaccine is one of the largest logistical tasks in the world today. To guarantee that vaccines reach communities that are most in danger from the coronavirus, authorities must overcome not only daunting logistics, but also deep fissures that trace back to an enduring
history of racism and segregation. In the US, one of the largest health systems in the Boston area, Mass General Brigham decided to take action to narrow the health inequity gap. I spoke with reporter Angelica Levito, who reports on how the problems n G be encountered in distributing the vaccine to its own employees showcases how much work it will take to ensure vaccines are administered equitably on a national level.
As vaccine distribution continues across the US, there have been increasing reports about inequality along racial lines in terms of who's been able to get vaccinated. Now, you looked at the situation with regard to one particular system of teaching hospitals and physician networks in Boston and how they approached their employees regarding vaccine education and access. Tell us a bit about what you found. At Mass General Brigham Health
System in Boston. They spent a lot of energy trying to ensure that vaccines were administered equitably across the health system, and the executives there looked at the data in the fall, the survey data that showed a large gap among racial lines and who was willing to get vaccinated. They saw the data and their team that's focused on equity knew that there would be an issue here that they had to overcome a lot of mistrust, a lot of misinformation
and try to reach the most vulnerable people. Because in Boston, like many places across the US, the impacts of the coronavirus have not been equal. Communities of color have been hit the hardest, and for a city like Boston that his complex history of aracial strife and distrust, that actually equated to most cases being concentrated to a few zip codes.
And so early on they thought about ways that they could educate their workers across all of the different departments from different racial backgrounds, how they could educate them about back seeds, and so they decided to find what they called trusted messengers throughout the hospital. They found doctors, particularly people of color, who could show that they were vaccinated
and go and answer questions. Early on, they hosted twenty eight educational sessions in seven different languages, and they even sent people to different departments to go and help people schedule appointments, particularly people who were not comfortable with English as their first language, so that they were not impacted by any of the barriers in terms of scheduling appointments
and getting the accurate information. And so, during the rollout of vaccines at Mass General Brigham, when they looked at who actually was getting vaccinated, I mean, how did that data, what did it show in terms of the demographics and racial breakdown as far as the hospital workers who had received the vaccine, so one thing that they invested in
heavily was measuring the results. They knew that in order to hold themselves accountable, they would need accurate data, and they used this data throughout to monitor their progress, and early on they noticed really large disparities. And now six weeks in, it's getting better, but the numbers are still pretty stark. About seventy of the health systems eighty thou workers have been immunized, and along racial lines of white, seventy six percent of Asian employees, fifty percent of Hispanic
and of Black employees have received shots. And then among people who speak a language other than English, the rate is fifty So you can see that despite all this work, there's still a pretty wide gap along racial lines. Now I want to touch on this question of language because I want to unpack a little bit how that might affect someone's ability to either receive information about the vaccine
or perhaps even a willingness to be vaccinated. So I think it's really important to note that people of all colors and all backgrounds naturally are skeptical of a vaccine that was developed in less than a year, and we know that the science did not emerge overnight. It had been decades in the making. And unfortunately, there's so much
misinformation spreading. More so, if you're a non English speaker in the US, you might not, you know, be able to understand all of the public health messages that are coming out, and you might be even more isolated and disconnected from the health system. And so that's why the team over at Mass General Brigham decided to really focus on bringing trusted information to people across the workforce in
many different languages. Um So for one, in one example, I spoke to a doctor who she volunteered to be a trusted messenger and teach people about the vaccines in Mandarin, and she only had one person show up to her session, but you know, she was able to have a one on one conversation and reach someone and answer their questions because a lot of people have questions. At this point.
In the US, the vaccination campaign really has been sort of a competition to see who can get an appointment the fastest, and how can you find the information and find the appointment, And if you don't speak English, a lot of these websites might miss you. As part of your reporting, you spoke to a number of different employees at mass General Brigham and in a number of different departments.
What did you hear about some of the reasons that employees either had not yet been vaccinated or say, reasons you heard about perhaps problems accessing the vaccine. I spoke to one environmental services manager named Ivan, and Ivan told me that when he surveyed his employees in the fall about whether they wanted to get a vaccine, none of
his twenty seven employees wanted to get it. And of course that's problematic many of his workers don't speak English, because we know these are the communities that are the most vulnerable to the virus. He had said that a lot of what he was hearing was just misinformation, and as he puts it, you know, people spent a lot of time on Facebook, a lot of time on in Stagram, and when that's all you're seeing and you're not connected to the health system and the accurate information, it's really
easy to get caught up. And so fortunately, after all of these different educational sessions and his own advocacy among his employees, almost all of them out of seven are now vaccinated UM, one other employee has an appointment, and one is still refusing. And I think that the reasons are complex. Not everybody is not everyone will change their minds immediately. I think a lot of it too that's important to remember is that mistrust among particularly Black Americans
Hispanic people. It's been built up over centuries. You know, all kinds of issues, whether it's um you know, history of being experimented on, or just being ignored by the medical system. These are not going to be solved overnight, but it's important to recognize them and to try and take steps early on so that they can be addressed and not just forgotten. That REases like a really important point. I think it also touches on the larger context of
the city. So for example, you know Mass General Brigham located in Boston. You know, how does the history of segregation or racism in that particular city. How do you think that has affected, for example, what you've seen at Mass General. So Boston has a complex history. The city gained international attention during the nineteen seventies when it's public
schools were under court order to desegregate through bussing. It led to white flight to the suburbs and protests and riots, and it's something that, unfortunately, something that we've seen across other cities in America too. But one thing it's important to remember about the impacts of this segregation is that
it often has left communities of color out. And so one of the executives who is leading the equity work at Mass General, Tom Sequist, as he put it, for years, the health system has has not catered to communities of colors. The facilities, the hospitals, the doctor's offices, they've been in the other side of town, and they've felt disconnected from people, and they haven't really gone to the communities that are
most vulnerable and catered to people there. It's been you need to come to us, and unfortunately, if you already feel uncomfortable, you're not going to go there. And so the system has really left people out, and you're seeing that play out in Boston and other places around the country. You know, what are the parallels then, about the situation you're seeing at Mass General Brigham in terms of what's going on at a national level with the vaccine rollout.
At this point, Unfortunately, it's really hard to know exactly how the demographic divide is playing out across the US because we have only about half of states reporting demographic data at least publicly. So here at Bloomberg, we started a vaccine demographic data project and we're tracking the publicly available demographic data across states, and so far, even though the data are incomplete, you're seeing a very large divide among white people, Asian people, Black people, and Hispanic people.
Most people getting vaccinated in the US are white, and we are seeing more Asian people getting vaccinated, but black and Hispanic are falling well behind. It's hard to say whether that's because of mistrust or access, and I don't think it's any one reason, but we are seeing this gap.
And again, given what we know about the virus and how it's disproportionately affecting communities of color, everyone I speak he says that if we really want to end this pandemic, these are the people we need to be reaching, and so, regardless of what the reason is, if we had this gap, it'll be really hard to end the pandemic. That was Angelica Levito and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around
the world. Visit Bloomberg dot com, slash Coronavirus, and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topha Foreheads, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Angelica Levito. Original music by Leo Citrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's out
of podcasts. Thanks for listening.