Most Harlemites Want COVID-19 Vaccine Despite Skepticism: Survey

HARLEM, NY — Most Harlem residents are showing interest in getting the coronavirus vaccine, but some obstacles remain in the effort to get the neighborhood fully vaccinated, according to a new survey by the City University of New York's Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

About 80 percent of Harlemites want to get the vaccine, according to the survey of 1,000 neighborhood residents, which was released Monday and conducted by phone and text message in mid-February.

Broken down by race, the survey showed more interest among white and Asian respondents, who both had upwards of 90 percent readiness to get vaccinated. Latinos were lower at 78 percent, while 77 percent of Black residents said they would be ready to get the shot.

Researchers said the findings were mostly encouraging, but showed some enduring skepticism in Black communities toward the medical establishment — embodied by the Tuskegee syphilis studies.

Hard-hit East Harlem lags

The results also showed geographic disparities: 28 percent of survey respondents in Central Harlem who are 65 or older have gotten the vaccine, while in harder-hit East Harlem, only 19 percent have received it.

"Facility of making an appointment or access to a place where one can receive the vaccine may be different in these two parts of the same neighborhood," said Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of CUNY CPH, during a Monday presentation of the survey results.

That finding has been echoed by others in East Harlem, including Councilmember Diana Ayala, who told Patch this week that her constituents were struggling to find vaccine sites within the neighborhood.

"It’s absurd to me that at this stage of the game, we don’t have enough vaccines in East Harlem to adequately vaccinate our community," she said.

A promised mass-vaccination site at La Marqueta has failed to materialize since it was announced in January. The closest city-run hub is in Central Harlem, which was not as badly hit by COVID-19.

The difficulty has been felt across Harlem: 28 percent of survey respondents said they had had trouble making a vaccine appointment, including 40 percent of people older than 65.

Still, tens of thousands of Harlemites have managed to get their shots, according to the city's data. The highest overall rates, in fact, have been in East Harlem — 10 percent of the 10035 ZIP code is fully vaccinated.

Harlemites want to protect themselves

The survey was carried out between Feb. 12 and Feb. 14 by the Harlem Health Initiative at CUNY SPH. The results were adjusted by race, ethnicity, gender, age and education to match the neighborhood's demographics.

When asked why they wanted the vaccine, the biggest chunk of survey respondents — 38 percent — said they wished to protect themselves from COVID-19. The second-biggest reason, at 29 percent, was "to help end the pandemic."

Still, when asked about their expectations of the vaccine rollout, Harlemites expressed reservations.

Of those were not ready to get the shot, nearly a third said they wanted to wait for clearer explanations from a scientific source, while 29 percent wanted to "wait and see how it works" on those who receive it, researchers said.

When asked whether the vaccines would be made available to everyone regardless of race and ethnicity, 76 percent of Harlemites said yes — but that number fell to 69 percent among Black respondents.