California released long-awaited data on the demographic breakdown of the state’s vaccination progress on Friday.
The state’s updated vaccine information page now contains a searchable list of counties with data on how vaccines have been allocated across racial and ethnic groups, plus age and gender.
Prior to the statewide release of racial/ethnicity data, only four Bay Area counties posted detailed demographic breakdowns of their vaccine recipients — Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara.
The lack of available data at the state and local levels concerned some public health experts, including Dr. Maria Garcia, an assistant professor of medicine at UCSF and co-director of the Multiethnic Health Equity Research Center.
“I’m very disturbed,” Garcia previously told The Chronicle. “We already know that there are inequities in COVID infection in and of itself. In order to address those inequities we need to make sure that we specifically target those very same communities for some of the therapeutics and for the vaccine and for prevention efforts. I find it really hard to believe that that information truly isn’t available.”
Here is the breakdown for what percentage of vaccines have gone to each race and ethnicity group in San Francisco so far:
• American Indian or Alaska Native: 0.2%
• Asian-American: 31.8%
• Latino: 8.4%
• Black: 3.5%
• Multi-race: 10.4%
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: 0.4%
• White: 30.6%
• Other: 7%
• Unknown: 7.8%
Here are the city’s demographics according to 2019 U.S. Census estimates:
• American Indian or Alaska Native: 0.7%
• Asian: 36%
• Latino: 15.2%
• Black: 5.6%
• Multi-race: 4.5%
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: 0.5%
• White: 40.2%
Currently, vaccines have been allocated primarily to health care workers and people over 65 in most counties. These groups may have different proportions than the overall population.
Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]
