Kane County’s Black, Latino residents ‘underserved’ by vaccination effort

Far fewer Black and Latino residents in Kane County have received COVID-19 vaccinations than their white neighbors.

Latino residents constitute more than 30% of Kane County’s population, the largest concentration of any county in the state, according to Kane County Public Health Department officials. But only about 10% of the county’s vaccines have gone to Latino residents so far, according to data from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The county’s Black residents are faring even worse, with only 2.7% of the shots going to them. White residents have received about 70% of the shots.

The new data on racial and ethnic disparities in the vaccine distribution reflects disparities for the state as a whole. But the numbers were particularly troubling to Kane County Board members who have seen national data showing that Black and Latino communities have been ravaged by high levels of COVID-19 infections.

“Quite clearly, certain demographic groups seem to be dramatically underserved,” county board member Ken Shepro said during Wednesday’s public health committee meeting. “One would hope that is not deliberate, that it’s one of those accidental things that are a result of a policy. But we need to ratchet up the pressure for those communities which are clearly underserved.”

Michael Isaacson, the community health director of the county’s health department, said some of the disparity is attributable to the demographics within the hospital workers and long-term care centers who received the initial priority for vaccines.

The age demographics for the county’s shots indicate most of the vaccine distributed locally has gone to health care workers, as people between the ages of 16 and 64 have received two-thirds of all the shots. The remaining third has gone to residents 65 and older.

The main point of frustration remains a lack of supply. Kane County is averaging about 2,500 vaccine doses administered daily. While some vaccines are flowing directly to local pharmacies, the county health department is set to receive only 1,500 new doses from the state in the next shipment.

“The requests coming in to us for the vaccine are typically in the thousands,” Isaacson said. “So the fact that we’re only getting 1,500 this week frames this supply issue we have right now. We need much more vaccine.”

Isaacson said there are much higher percentages of eligible Illinois residents in counties downstate who have received the vaccine because they are getting relatively large numbers of doses for their population size. He pointed to Champaign County, where nearly 70% of the senior citizens have had their first vaccine dose.

“If we had more doses here, we could do that, too,” he said. “The problem is they are getting way more doses than we are. Many counties are getting much more vaccine than we seem to be getting.”

County board members asked why that’s happening and how the state decides what areas receive more or less vaccine. Isaacson said all of the collar counties are frustrated with the relatively low amount of vaccine they’ve received, and health officials in all those counties keep asking what the guidelines are, but they remain a mystery.

“We don’t have a satisfactory answer for that,” Isaacson said. “We need to figure out what the state rubric is.”