NEW YORK — When it was the Rev. Al Sharpton’s turn to get
inoculated against COVID-19, he did so on camera at NYC Health +
Hospitals/Harlem — a city institution well known for providing health care to
the Black community.
اضافة اعلان
Sharpton was trying to send a message to his community: The
vaccine is safe and effective.
But that message was aimed at the hospital’s staff, too. At one
point, the facility’s staff had the lowest vaccination rate among hospitals in
the city. Even after steady improvement, as of mid-March, the hospital still
had a rate well below the average for hospitals in the state.
In New York state, African Americans make up about 17 percent of
the adult population but have received only 10 percent of the shots. That is
because of difficulties gaining access to the shots but also because of a
lingering reluctance — and that has rung true at Harlem Hospital, where a
majority of the staff is Black, administrators said.
The situation at Harlem Hospital underscores how entrenched this
mistrust can be: Even workers at a hospital where the vaccine is readily
available are wary of getting inoculated. But it also shows how it is possible
to make progress in changing attitudes about the vaccines, even if slowly.
At Harlem Hospital and nationally, confidence in the vaccines
has been rising among Black Americans. Recent polls show that Black Americans,
though initially more skeptical, are now about as likely to want to get
vaccinated as white Americans, and that politics, not race, is emerging as a
larger divide. Republicans are now the group with the highest degree of
skepticism: In a late February CBS News poll, 34 percent of Republicans said
they would not be vaccinated against COVID-19, compared with 10 percent of
Democrats.
Brazil Rice, 54, who has worked at Harlem Hospital for 21 years
in cleaning and maintenance, was among those who said they were going to wait.
“It wasn’t properly field-tested,” he said. “It usually takes
years to field-test a vaccine.” He stressed that his distrust had nothing to do
with the hospital, which has made getting vaccinated “pretty convenient.”
“I have every intention of getting it; I’m just not rushing,” he
said. And when the halls are quiet on the night shift, he keeps an eye on his
friend who has been vaccinated and so far is doing well, he said.
Harlem Hospital’s low vaccination rate did not come as a
surprise to its leaders. A poll taken at the institution in late 2020 before
the vaccines were approved, showed that only 30 percent of workers there were
willing to be vaccinated, said Eboné Carrington, the hospital’s chief executive
officer.
Black workers cited concern rooted in the legacy of medical
injustices like the Tuskegee experiment, a study by the US government that
withheld syphilis treatment from Black men, and general skepticism of a vaccine
developed quickly, under a presidential administration they did not trust.
“The staff reflects a population of people who traditionally are
reluctant to vaccinate, and not just hesitant, but rightfully fearful, at
having been wronged,” she said.
The hospital is known as a historic training ground for Black
medical staff, and for saving the life of the Reverend Docotor Martin Luther
King Junior after a woman suddenly stabbed him in the chest in 1958 at a Harlem
department store. Drawn to its prominence, local celebrities have been getting
vaccinated there. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist, posted on Twitter
about his recent inoculation at the hospital.
“If we can inspire people, as we have countless times, to
protest certain social ills, I hope we can inspire them to do what is necessary
to have a healthy environment in our community,” Sharpton said in an interview
about his vaccination.
Keisha Wisdom, Harlem Hospital’s nursing chief who spent time in
an intensive care unit in 2020 after contracting the coronavirus, also
publicized her shot.
“I think that the history of medical experimentation on Black people
plays a role in some of the decision making,” Wisdom said of why about half her
nursing staff remained unvaccinated. “It is real, and it is something we have
to talk about. And then find a way to continue that dialogue.”
The early weeks of the vaccine rollout saw widespread hesitancy
among hospital workers in the nation and New York state, with less than half of
eligible workers vaccinated by early January. In the city’s public hospitals,
the number was even lower, at 31 percent.
That earned the ire of Governor Andrew Cuomo. “This is a
management issue for the hospitals,” he said at a January 4 news conference.
Harlem Hospital has been trying to get the rate up with an “outreach
blitz” that includes publicity, town halls and one-on-one conversations. Its
current vaccination rate among staff, 51 percent, puts it in “the middle” of
the 11 hospitals in the city’s public system, the city said, but still well
below the near 80 percent average vaccination rate for hospitals in New York
state as a whole.
Some nurses told their supervisors that they didn’t feel a
pressing need to get the vaccine, because they already had COVID-19, Wisdom
said. The hospital was hit hard by the virus, with about 200 patient deaths
from last March to September. The fatality rate was 36.6 percent, among the
highest in the city, according to data the hospital reported to the state.
There is now no shortage of personal protective equipment so
some staff said they felt more secure.
“Staff are saying, ‘I almost died in the first wave, I’m good,’”
Carrington said. “There is this invincibility that it’s hard for me to offset.”
Doctor Mitchell Katz, the chief executive officer of the city’s
public hospital system, said last month that about 40 percent of nurses in the
city’s public hospitals remained unvaccinated. But rather than express alarm,
he said that he was willing to be patient in the coming months and focus on
personal outreach, like one-on-one conversations, to increase the rate.
Extra resources did not flood into Harlem Hospital after Cuomo’s
criticism, nor did Katz seek to reprimand Carrington. Katz said he was not
tracking vaccination rates by hospital because he believed the rate was not a
management issue but related to the percentage of Black and brown staff in each
institution.
“To me, there are very understandable reasons people don’t want
to get vaccinated yet,” he said, naming the lack of long-term studies about the
COVID vaccines, and the negative experiences many Black and brown New Yorkers
have had with doctors. “I find it surprising that so many people are surprised.”
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