Black leaders in Travis County said they worry that Austin Public Health is not taking the right steps to equitably offer vaccines to residents of color after data released by the agency show some populations are grossly underserved.
The dashboard on Thursday showed that Black residents make up 7.6% of Travis County s total population, but are just 3.4% of Austin Public Health s recipients for the first dose of coronavirus vaccine during the first week in February, the period for the most recent data available.
White residents make up 68.2% of the population and received 65.4% of the vaccine that week; Hispanic residents make up 18.1% and got 17.2% of the vaccine; and Asian residents make up 5.1% and got 7.4% of doses.
Ken and Vera Brooks have been married for 43 years, but Dec. 10 marked just the second time in their marriage they picked up a box of groceries at the Travis County Exposition Center, the nearest Central Texas Food Bank distribution site to their home. We re both retired and with the way the economy is rent and everything kind of high we come here for food, Vera Brooks said. It helps a lot.
They went through an intake process before weaving through the parking lot toward masked volunteers who placed a cardboard box labeled disaster relief into their trunk.
The Brooks box included milk, potatoes, onions, spaghetti sauce, fresh produce and other canned goods that would get them through the month.