Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day three forty
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story.
Speaker 1: As vaccines roll out across the US, logistics and supply
Speaker 1: are just some of the challenges in making sure everyone
Speaker 1: has equal access to the vaccine. One Boston health system
Speaker 1: is also confronting another major problem in vaccine distribution, a
Speaker 1: long history of racial inequity in the US healthcare system.
Speaker 1: But first, here's what happened in Virus News today. Knew
Speaker 1: you York City may have to hold back as many
Speaker 1: as thirty five thousand vaccine appointments after severe winter storms
Speaker 1: across the nation delayed deliveries. That's according to Mayor Build
Speaker 1: a Blasio. The city currently has fewer than thirty thousand
Speaker 1: first doses on hand and could run out by the
Speaker 1: end of the day. On Wednesday, South Africa will begin
Speaker 1: administering Johnson and Johnson's vaccine to health workers following the
Speaker 1: arrival of a first consignment of the shots on Tuesday night.
Speaker 1: The country has offered its supply of the Astrasennica Oxford
Speaker 1: vaccine to the African Union after it was found to
Speaker 1: have little effect on the variant first identified in the country.
Speaker 1: Late South Africa has recorded more than one point four
Speaker 1: nine million coronavirus cases, the most in Africa and finally
Speaker 1: in New Zealand. Auckland's three day lockdown will end after
Speaker 1: authorities expressed confidence that the latest community outbreak is contained.
Speaker 1: Auckland moved to alert level too at midnight on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: allowing schools and businesses to reopen. The remainder of New
Speaker 1: Zealand has moved to Level one, meaning people no longer
Speaker 1: have to observe social distancing or limit the size of gatherings.
Speaker 1: And now for today's main story, Distributing the coronavirus vaccine
Speaker 1: is one of the largest logistical tasks in the world today.
Speaker 1: To guarantee that vaccines reach communities that are most in
Speaker 1: danger from the coronavirus, authorities must overcome not only daunting logistics,
Speaker 1: but also deep fissures that trace back to an enduring
Speaker 1: history of racism and segregation. In the US, one of
Speaker 1: the largest health systems in the Boston area, Mass General
Speaker 1: Brigham decided to take action to narrow the health inequity gap.
Speaker 1: I spoke with reporter Angelica Levito, who reports on how
Speaker 1: the problems n G be encountered in distributing the vaccine
Speaker 1: to its own employees showcases how much work it will
Speaker 1: take to ensure vaccines are administered equitably on a national level.
Speaker 1: As vaccine distribution continues across the US, there have been
Speaker 1: increasing reports about inequality along racial lines in terms of
Speaker 1: who's been able to get vaccinated. Now, you looked at
Speaker 1: the situation with regard to one particular system of teaching
Speaker 1: hospitals and physician networks in Boston and how they approached
Speaker 1: their employees regarding vaccine education and access. Tell us a
Speaker 1: bit about what you found. At Mass General Brigham Health
Speaker 1: System in Boston. They spent a lot of energy trying
Speaker 1: to ensure that vaccines were administered equitably across the health system,
Speaker 1: and the executives there looked at the data in the fall,
Speaker 1: the survey data that showed a large gap among racial
Speaker 1: lines and who was willing to get vaccinated. They saw
Speaker 1: the data and their team that's focused on equity knew
Speaker 1: that there would be an issue here that they had
Speaker 1: to overcome a lot of mistrust, a lot of misinformation
Speaker 1: and try to reach the most vulnerable people. Because in Boston,
Speaker 1: like many places across the US, the impacts of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus have not been equal. Communities of color have been
Speaker 1: hit the hardest, and for a city like Boston that
Speaker 1: his complex history of aracial strife and distrust, that actually
Speaker 1: equated to most cases being concentrated to a few zip codes.
Speaker 1: And so early on they thought about ways that they
Speaker 1: could educate their workers across all of the different departments
Speaker 1: from different racial backgrounds, how they could educate them about
Speaker 1: back seeds, and so they decided to find what they
Speaker 1: called trusted messengers throughout the hospital. They found doctors, particularly
Speaker 1: people of color, who could show that they were vaccinated
Speaker 1: and go and answer questions. Early on, they hosted twenty
Speaker 1: eight educational sessions in seven different languages, and they even
Speaker 1: sent people to different departments to go and help people
Speaker 1: schedule appointments, particularly people who were not comfortable with English
Speaker 1: as their first language, so that they were not impacted
Speaker 1: by any of the barriers in terms of scheduling appointments
Speaker 1: and getting the accurate information. And so, during the rollout
Speaker 1: of vaccines at Mass General Brigham, when they looked at
Speaker 1: who actually was getting vaccinated, I mean, how did that data,
Speaker 1: what did it show in terms of the demographics and
Speaker 1: racial breakdown as far as the hospital workers who had
Speaker 1: received the vaccine, so one thing that they invested in
Speaker 1: heavily was measuring the results. They knew that in order
Speaker 1: to hold themselves accountable, they would need accurate data, and
Speaker 1: they used this data throughout to monitor their progress, and
Speaker 1: early on they noticed really large disparities. And now six
Speaker 1: weeks in, it's getting better, but the numbers are still
Speaker 1: pretty stark. About seventy of the health systems eighty thou
Speaker 1: workers have been immunized, and along racial lines of white,
Speaker 1: seventy six percent of Asian employees, fifty percent of Hispanic
Speaker 1: and of Black employees have received shots. And then among
Speaker 1: people who speak a language other than English, the rate
Speaker 1: is fifty So you can see that despite all this work,
Speaker 1: there's still a pretty wide gap along racial lines. Now
Speaker 1: I want to touch on this question of language because
Speaker 1: I want to unpack a little bit how that might
Speaker 1: affect someone's ability to either receive information about the vaccine
Speaker 1: or perhaps even a willingness to be vaccinated. So I
Speaker 1: think it's really important to note that people of all
Speaker 1: colors and all backgrounds naturally are skeptical of a vaccine
Speaker 1: that was developed in less than a year, and we
Speaker 1: know that the science did not emerge overnight. It had
Speaker 1: been decades in the making. And unfortunately, there's so much
Speaker 1: misinformation spreading. More so, if you're a non English speaker
Speaker 1: in the US, you might not, you know, be able
Speaker 1: to understand all of the public health messages that are
Speaker 1: coming out, and you might be even more isolated and
Speaker 1: disconnected from the health system. And so that's why the
Speaker 1: team over at Mass General Brigham decided to really focus
Speaker 1: on bringing trusted information to people across the workforce in
Speaker 1: many different languages. Um So for one, in one example,
Speaker 1: I spoke to a doctor who she volunteered to be
Speaker 1: a trusted messenger and teach people about the vaccines in Mandarin,
Speaker 1: and she only had one person show up to her session,
Speaker 1: but you know, she was able to have a one
Speaker 1: on one conversation and reach someone and answer their questions
Speaker 1: because a lot of people have questions. At this point.
Speaker 1: In the US, the vaccination campaign really has been sort
Speaker 1: of a competition to see who can get an appointment
Speaker 1: the fastest, and how can you find the information and
Speaker 1: find the appointment, And if you don't speak English, a
Speaker 1: lot of these websites might miss you. As part of
Speaker 1: your reporting, you spoke to a number of different employees
Speaker 1: at mass General Brigham and in a number of different departments.
Speaker 1: What did you hear about some of the reasons that
Speaker 1: employees either had not yet been vaccinated or say, reasons
Speaker 1: you heard about perhaps problems accessing the vaccine. I spoke
Speaker 1: to one environmental services manager named Ivan, and Ivan told
Speaker 1: me that when he surveyed his employees in the fall
Speaker 1: about whether they wanted to get a vaccine, none of
Speaker 1: his twenty seven employees wanted to get it. And of
Speaker 1: course that's problematic many of his workers don't speak English,
Speaker 1: because we know these are the communities that are the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable to the virus. He had said that a
Speaker 1: lot of what he was hearing was just misinformation, and
Speaker 1: as he puts it, you know, people spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time on Facebook, a lot of time on in Stagram,
Speaker 1: and when that's all you're seeing and you're not connected
Speaker 1: to the health system and the accurate information, it's really
Speaker 1: easy to get caught up. And so fortunately, after all
Speaker 1: of these different educational sessions and his own advocacy among
Speaker 1: his employees, almost all of them out of seven are
Speaker 1: now vaccinated UM, one other employee has an appointment, and
Speaker 1: one is still refusing. And I think that the reasons
Speaker 1: are complex. Not everybody is not everyone will change their
Speaker 1: minds immediately. I think a lot of it too that's
Speaker 1: important to remember is that mistrust among particularly Black Americans
Speaker 1: Hispanic people. It's been built up over centuries. You know,
Speaker 1: all kinds of issues, whether it's um you know, history
Speaker 1: of being experimented on, or just being ignored by the
Speaker 1: medical system. These are not going to be solved overnight,
Speaker 1: but it's important to recognize them and to try and
Speaker 1: take steps early on so that they can be addressed
Speaker 1: and not just forgotten. That REases like a really important point.
Speaker 1: I think it also touches on the larger context of
Speaker 1: the city. So for example, you know Mass General Brigham
Speaker 1: located in Boston. You know, how does the history of
Speaker 1: segregation or racism in that particular city. How do you
Speaker 1: think that has affected, for example, what you've seen at
Speaker 1: Mass General. So Boston has a complex history. The city
Speaker 1: gained international attention during the nineteen seventies when it's public
Speaker 1: schools were under court order to desegregate through bussing. It
Speaker 1: led to white flight to the suburbs and protests and riots,
Speaker 1: and it's something that, unfortunately, something that we've seen across
Speaker 1: other cities in America too. But one thing it's important
Speaker 1: to remember about the impacts of this segregation is that
Speaker 1: it often has left communities of color out. And so
Speaker 1: one of the executives who is leading the equity work
Speaker 1: at Mass General, Tom Sequist, as he put it, for years,
Speaker 1: the health system has has not catered to communities of colors.
Speaker 1: The facilities, the hospitals, the doctor's offices, they've been in
Speaker 1: the other side of town, and they've felt disconnected from people,
Speaker 1: and they haven't really gone to the communities that are
Speaker 1: most vulnerable and catered to people there. It's been you
Speaker 1: need to come to us, and unfortunately, if you already
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable, you're not going to go there. And so
Speaker 1: the system has really left people out, and you're seeing
Speaker 1: that play out in Boston and other places around the country.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the parallels then, about the situation
Speaker 1: you're seeing at Mass General Brigham in terms of what's
Speaker 1: going on at a national level with the vaccine rollout.
Speaker 1: At this point, Unfortunately, it's really hard to know exactly
Speaker 1: how the demographic divide is playing out across the US
Speaker 1: because we have only about half of states reporting demographic
Speaker 1: data at least publicly. So here at Bloomberg, we started
Speaker 1: a vaccine demographic data project and we're tracking the publicly
Speaker 1: available demographic data across states, and so far, even though
Speaker 1: the data are incomplete, you're seeing a very large divide
Speaker 1: among white people, Asian people, Black people, and Hispanic people.
Speaker 1: Most people getting vaccinated in the US are white, and
Speaker 1: we are seeing more Asian people getting vaccinated, but black
Speaker 1: and Hispanic are falling well behind. It's hard to say
Speaker 1: whether that's because of mistrust or access, and I don't
Speaker 1: think it's any one reason, but we are seeing this gap.
Speaker 1: And again, given what we know about the virus and
Speaker 1: how it's disproportionately affecting communities of color, everyone I speak
Speaker 1: he says that if we really want to end this pandemic,
Speaker 1: these are the people we need to be reaching, and so,
Speaker 1: regardless of what the reason is, if we had this gap,
Speaker 1: it'll be really hard to end the pandemic. That was
Speaker 1: Angelica Levito and that's it for our show today. For
Speaker 1: coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around
Speaker 1: the world. Visit Bloomberg dot com, slash Coronavirus, and if
Speaker 1: you like the show, please leave us a review and
Speaker 1: a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best
Speaker 1: way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The
Speaker 1: Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topha Foreheads, Magnus Hendrickson
Speaker 1: and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by
Speaker 1: Angelica Levito. Original music by Leo Citrin. Our editors are
Speaker 1: Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's out
Speaker 1: of podcasts. Thanks for listening.