SILVER SPRING, Md. — New research shows 60% of Americans intend to get the coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available, but the Pew Research Center found Black Americans remain less likely to get the shot compared to other racial and ethnic groups.
“I’m not surprised,” Dr. Wayne Frederick said.
Dr. Frederick, who is the president of Howard University and works as a physician.
According to the Pew Research Center, most people have grown more confident in the development process and intend to take the COVID-19 vaccine, but most Black people are not planning to get it.
The study, published in December, shows that 42% of Black adults said they would definitely or probably get COVID-19 vaccine if it was available.
“It’s a general lack of trust in institutions... Law enforcement -- African-Americans are hesitant about how law enforcement has treated them in the past and treats them today,” Dr. Frederick explained. “You can apply that to so many other things that we see. During the mortgage crisis, banks were taking advantage of African-Americans in that crisis.”
Throughout history, Dr. Frederick added, institutions that Black Americans should be holding up seem to fail them.
He told WUSA9 in September that the mistrust in vaccines also comes from the history of how Black people were used in medical research.
“Everything from the Tuskegee incident, in which African-American men were actually given syphilis and denied treatment against their knowledge,” Dr. Frederick gave an example.
According to the Centers For Disease Control (CDC), longstanding systemic health and social inequities have put African-Americans at a higher risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19.
“We are potentially heading for a massive crisis,” Dr. Frederick said
He is worried about what the future may look like for Black Americans if mindsets do no not shift around the COVID-19 vaccine.
“If we take the vaccine in smaller percentages as a community, you could get to the end of the spring where over 100 million Americans have taken the vaccine and the percentage of African-Americans is small – they now become a very concentrated focus group that continues to get infected, continues to be hospitalized, continues to die. That could really have a very long-term impact on African-Americans,” Dr. Frederick told WUSA9.
He said it is imperative to make sure the government, healthcare professionals, and community members are delivering accurate information based in facts to Black and other minority communities.
Dr. Frederick said it is important to help people understand the science and that the vaccines are safe once approved.