As of Feb. 6, Austin Public Health has administered 37,258 doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the Austin area, with about 62% of those going to people age 60 and older.
Age is just one of the demographics APH is tracking on its new vaccine distribution dashboard that launched earlier this week: The data is also organized by priority age groups, ZIP code, and race and ethnicity. It only covers those doses administered by APH; the 350-plus vaccine providers in Travis County approved by the Texas Department of State Health Services are required to report data to the state but not the local authority. Although officials are encouraged by the results so far, APH Director Stephanie Hayden-Howard said the agency is still “deeply concerned” that vaccines aren’t reaching Black and Hispanic residents.
Travis County is home to 129,438 people age 65 and up, according to the most recent American Community Survey census data from 2019. Some 68% of those people identify as white, 18% as Hispanic, and 5% as Asian. As of Feb. 6, those numbers are mostly consistent with the proportion of vaccines being administered by APH: 64% of APH vaccine recipients are white, 18.1% are Hispanic, and 7.7% Asian.
However, only 3.7% of those vaccine recipients are Black, about half of that percentage (7.6%) of Travis County’s total 65-plus population. In addition, APH said that vaccination among Latinx residents needs to be higher to counter transmission levels among that population, which has borne a disparate burden of the community’s illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths. “We must expand current efforts to provide vaccines to more members of our Hispanic and African American communities, especially in areas where disease transmission is high,” said Hayden-Howard.
At the beginning of the year, the Austin Latino Coalition called on APH to create a dashboard including the demographics of those receiving the vaccine. Austin Latino Coalition’s Paul Saldaña told the Chronicle that the group’s concerns regarding equity are not new. “Everything that people are experiencing now in trying to access an appointment to get the vaccine is exactly what our Black and brown communities experienced when we were trying to access COVID testing,” he said. APH has said it’s exploring how to counter these disparities by working with grassroots groups to communicate the importance of vaccination, and by partnering with Travis County to proactively call vulnerable community members.
According to the dashboard, most of the vaccines administered by APH have gone to residents living in ZIP codes west of I-35, although the ZIP code that’s seen the most doses – Northeast Travis County’s 78660, with 1,635 doses – has seen some of the highest rates of infection. This week, the Biden administration announced it will begin shipping vaccine doses directly to retail pharmacies across the country beginning today (Feb. 11) in an effort to expand access. But Austin Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison pointed out that strategy will only work where pharmacies exist, which is not the case where some of Austin’s most vulnerable populations in the Eastern Crescent live. “I’d certainly hope that when we do get that large influx [of supply] that it’s able to be applied in other parts of the city … where that [strategy] won’t work,” said Harper-Madison. “And [I’d] like for them to be considered simultaneously – certainly not as an aside.”
This article appears in February 12 • 2021.