Santa Clara Co. Underreported Number Of Latino COVID Vaccinations

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — Santa Clara County underreported the number of Hispanic/Latino residents who have been vaccinated for COVID-19 by more than 22,000 people because of an error in transferring data to the California Immunization Registry.

According to a news release Monday evening, county officials claimed that the race/ethnicity data point for Latinos who had received the vaccine from Kaiser was automatically replaced with “other” or “non-Hispanic” upon transferring the data into the registry.

County officials said they corrected the error by comparing data from the registry to data from Kaiser.

As of Tuesday, the county’s vaccine dashboard indicates that just over 40 percent of the Hispanic/Latino population, or 168,537 people, have received at least one dose. County officials have emphasized the importance of reaching communities of color that have been hit hardest by the pandemic.

“Robust data validation and data analysis like the ones that identified this issue are key tools to understand and address the disparate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the community,” county officials said in a news release. “Better understanding of vaccination rates for the Hispanic/Latino community is critical to inform strategies that will ensure equity in vaccination and other responses to the pandemic.”

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