Loretto Hospital To Administer First COVID-19 Vaccine In Chicago

CHICAGO — Health care workers at Loretto Hospital in Austin, an African-American neighborhood devastated by the coronavirus crisis, are set to be the first to receive vaccinations in the city on Tuesday.

"This is a big deal. To bring the vaccinations to one of the hardest hit communities is what should be happening. When you're talking about equity, and making sure communities like Austin are not ignored," State Rep. LaShawn Ford said.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot's office announced the first doses administered at Loretto would be livestreamed on Tuesday morning.

In April, Austin residents had limited access to COVID-19 testing. It wasn't until Ford and other Black elected officials pressured Gov. J.B. Pritzker's office to make good on broken promises to quickly boost access to testing that Loretto was able to start testing 500 people a day in May.

"To be on the front end of testing is the total opposite of earlier when we had to fight to just get testing in Austin," Ford said. "This time it's the city of Chicago doing this, not the state. It's what we expect to happen on the West Side. Most importantly, I think this is the model we have to follow to make sure Black communities don't get left out. And I thank the mayor of Chicago for that."

In Austin ZIP code 60644, more than 27,000 people — that's 1-in-18 residents — have contracted COVID-19 and 102 people in the postal district have died since March 1, according to city COVID-19 statistics.

Loretto Hospital chief executive George Miller called Tuesday's ceremonial first vaccinations "beginning of the end for all of us who have suffered from this dreaded virus" and hope for the future.

"The fact that we are getting a solution for the virus, and the mayor's office selected for us to receive it speaks volumes about the city's effort to address the disparity and inequity in how the health care system has affected African American communities for decades," Miller said.

"It gives us hope that this long nightmare is going to be over. And we're going to remember December 14 as the historic date when vaccinations got rolling early in the morning at The Loretto Hospital. It's exciting and something we've been looking forward to for a long time."

Miller said after employees raised concerns about getting the coronavirus vaccine, and only42% of Black Americans polled by the Pew Research Center said they would definitely or probably take the vaccine.

Miller said he plans to take the vaccine in hopes of easing fears expressed to him by some hospital employees and to inspire other Black people who might be skeptical to get vaccinated as well.

"Although, I'm not an essential frontline worker, there's a saying, leadership is as leadership does," he said. "A lot of them have asked difficult questions about whether they should trust the vaccination. They know what happened with [to African American men in the] Tuskegee [Syphilis Study] ... So, I'm going to work hard to convince them that what they're doing by taking the vaccine on a volunteer basis is the right thing to do."