Friction quickly built as people from outside Washington Heights flooded in. “The majority of people being vaccinated were not from the low-income predominantly Latino neighborhood,” Susana Bejar, a doctor who volunteered at the site, wrote on Twitter. “I've never seen so many White people in Washington Heights.”
The mayor investigated. Weeks later, the armory began reserving 60% of new appointments for neighborhood residents. Other vaccine sites have followed suit.
Across New York, more than a fifth of vaccine recipients are nonresidents, who are younger and more likely to be White, according to city data. As of Tuesday, 59% of out-of-towners were White and 7% were Black.
Outside Manhattan, the most-vaccinated neighborhoods are majority White, affluent communities where most residents have Internet access. In Breezy Point, a neighborhood of 2,300 people, there's a large population of police and first responders. In City Island, a Bronx community with 4,500 residents, city council members and community groups are active in the vaccine program. “When the vaccine came around, there was no hesitancy,” said Paul Klein, president of the City Island Chamber of Commerce.
Jim Livingston, 67, a retired police detective, said residents post available vaccine slots on the island’s Facebook page and “we can gather people and take them to the site.”
The siting of clinics also has contributed to inequities. Manhattan, the highest-vaccinated borough — and home to some of the world’s most affluent people — also has the most sites. There are 10 per 100,000 adults in Manhattan versus five in Brooklyn, the least vaccinated.
Uneven Vaccinations
In Queens, which has six sites per 100,000, 70-year-old Marta Munoz, a house cleaner, rode the subway to the Citi Field vaccine station last month without an appointment. She wandered around the gates for half an hour before a Spanish-speaking worker helped her call a scheduling hotline.
“I don’t have a computer, I don’t know how to say most things in English," she said. “I have no one to help me at home. It's just me.”
-With assistance from Maria Elena Vizcaino, Jeremy Cf Lin and Angelica LaVito.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.