Many Latino Californians waited to get a COVID vaccine. Why they’re rolling up their sleeves

When COVID-19 hit close to home, infecting her two brothers and sending an acquaintance to the hospital, Gabriela Aguilar made up her mind to finally get a vaccine to protect herself against the virus.

She first attended a vaccine drive hosted by Sacramento nonprofit and rolled up her sleeve in late September, almost six months after vaccines became widely available to California adults.

Looking back, Aguilar said she hesitated because she worried about how rapidly the government and industry developed the vaccine and how quickly it received approval for emergency use by the Federal Drug Administration.

“I think my main concern was just how quick it came out,”Aguilar, 27, a nutritionist said. “I just didn’t feel comfortable with it at first.”

Her initial reluctance to get the vaccine and her decision to finally obtain one reflects the calculations thousands of California Latinos are making 17 months into the pandemic. Their reasons for getting vaccinated now range from gaining more convenient access to doses to witnessing the devastation the disease has brought on to their families and communities.

Vaccination rates among Latino Californians still lag other ethnic groups. About 40.2% of Latinos are unvaccinated, much higher than the unvaccinated rates among Asian (4.9%) and white Californians (29.6%).

The delta variant, however, motivated many Latino Californians to get the shots. Data from the California Department of Public Health show 59.9% of vaccine-eligible Latinos in the state are fully or partially vaccinated against the virus.

That’s up from 50.5% of California Latinos on July 15, when Los Angeles County handed down an indoor mask mandate because of climbing delta variant cases.

In July, the Kaiser Family Foundation vaccine monitor assessed unvaccinated Americans and found they primarily fell into two groups of about equal size: People who would “definitely not” get a vaccine, and people like Aguilar who were taking a “wait and see” approach.

Among unvaccinated adults, according to the survey, 1 in 5 said recent headlines about COVID variants made them more likely to get vaccinated.

That’s what convinced Hector Hernandez, 43, of Bakersfield to get vaccinated in August.

“We started seeing the numbers going up and seeing families dying from COVID,” said Hernandez, who received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in August at a vaccine event in Taft. “That was one of the reasons I decided to get vaccinated.”

For months, Latino communities health experts have urged public officials to partner with trusted messengers in diverse communities to spread accurate information about the vaccine’s efficacy and set up vaccine clinics in local neighborhoods or community events.

One of those vaccine clinics occurred in Sacramento, in the first week of October.

Billy Gougherty, a program director at Sacramento nonprofit that holds a weekly vaccine clinic with the California Department of Public Health, believes there is still a lot of misinformation over the vaccine among underserved populations.

“A big part of our outreach is making sure that the vaccine is accessible,” he said. “We want to also make sure that the facts are there, that you are making an informed decision not based on misinformation.”

Lack of access to vaccines

At Gougherty’s pop-up vaccine clinic in a Sacramento parking lot, health officials anticipated inoculating dozens of community members for their first or second doses of the vaccine. They provided a food truck giving away free paninis to patients who took their shots.

Yessica Blandon, 37, and her 15-year-old daughter arrived 15 minutes into the vaccine drive. Blandon said they felt relieved to receive their final dose of the Pfizer vaccine there.

As a former nurse at a Nicaraguan hospital, Blandon said she contracted the virus twice in the last year and a half. Blandon, who moved to the U.S. three months ago, struggled to gain access to a dose in Nicaragua.

At the clinic, a translator and Spanish-speaking nurses talked Blandon and her daughter through the process. Blandon said finding access to a dose was far easier to do in the U.S.

“Aside from contracting COVID before, I feel a sense of security now that I’m vaccinated,” she said in Spanish.

Gougherty said his staff members at the nonprofit, Asian Resources, speak a total of 20 languages to assist community members like Blandon who are not fluent in English, which is essential to communicating with diverse communities about the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Accompanied by a friend who was also getting their shot, Aguilar received her second Pfizer vaccine dose last week at the Asian Resources vaccine clinic.

Aguilar, an aspiring nurse, understands how the lack of health care access can make Latino populations vulnerable to the virus. It’s why she’s educating the unvaccinated members of the family to get their shots.

“It’s nice to be able to give them those resources to answer the questions and concerns that they have,” she said.

Watching family members get the vaccine

Hernandez of Bakersfield said he was also concerned about his school-aged children and 112-year-old grandfather, who lives at home, contracting the virus.

Seeing his parents receive the vaccine and experience no troubling side effects also eased Hernandez’s mind.

Reyna Olaguez, executive director of a youth-led media outlet, South Kern Sol, in Kern County that has organized vaccine clinics, said community members often cite vaccine side effects, lack of accessible health care and government mistrust as reasons why they haven’t gotten vaccinated.

“Sometimes people think that they’re going to get sick, that they’re not going to be able to go to work the next day,” she said.

Olaguez said sharing county COVID-19 statistics with community members has worked as a driver to get more people vaccinated.

“I think it’s highlighting those numbers that really encourage folks to go get the vaccine because they could be next,” she said.