This Friday, the city of Boston will launch a mobile vaccination pilot program to bring COVID-19 vaccines directly to the neighborhoods that need them the most. Marty Martinez, Boston’s Chief of Health and Human Services, joined host Joe Mathieu on Morning Edition today to talk about the program and the critical role vaccines will play in ending the pandemic.
“We know it's important to have access and locations, but it's also important to break down any barriers,” Martinez said about the mobile program. “And if that means we need to bring [the vaccine] to locations, that's what we're going to try to do.”
The program will dispatch mobile vaccination units to hard-hit neighborhoods like Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan and East Boston — communities of color that have had some of the highest rates of infection in the city, along with lower vaccination rates than predominantly white neighborhoods.
Addressing residents' hesitations to getting the vaccine is also a goal for Martinez, noting that it’s a “miracle” that three effective vaccines have been produced in under one year.
“It's really important that our leading experts nationally have been clear that everyone should take the vaccine that becomes available to them first,” Martinez said. “The J&J [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine, which is only one shot and is easier to store and administer, is proven 100 percent effective at preventing death and 85 percent effective in its trials preventing serious hospitalization.”
WATCH: Martinez on vaccine hesitation
The mobile unit will use whichever vaccine is available at the time it launches, Martinez said, noting that all three vaccines — from Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer — are crucial tools for slowing the spread of the virus. “We really want people not to try to choose one, but to take the one that's available to them first,” he said.
Martinez noted that the vaccination disparities between neighborhoods are “not incredibly surprising” because of the state's eligibility requirements, which have so far prioritized older Bostonians and healthcare workers. Martinez says the requirements have “skewed” some of the vaccination rates for communities of color.
“For example, the Latino population continues as one of the younger populations in the city and has one of the lowest vaccination rates, having many less people who are eligible based on some of those restrictions,” Martinez said, addressing the city’s ongoing commitment to monitoring equity in access to vaccines.
“That eligibility is important. It has prioritized those who've been most severely impacted and who have faced severe hospitalization and even death,” he said. “So I think that stability is key, but we're going to keep monitoring that data as more people get access.”
