COVID-19 ethnicity data shows low vaccinations for Hispanics in Idaho, but improving case counts
Ethnicity data for COVID-19 vaccinations and cases has been inconsistently collected since the pandemic began. One health district said the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare told them not to draw any conclusions based on demographic data, because not all vaccine and testing locations were collecting it.
The lack of data is nothing new for the health experts who have been tracking COVID-19 cases and trends since the beginning of the pandemic. The state did not start reporting ethnicity data to the public until May, because the accuracy was questionable, a health department spokesperson said.
“We don’t have a good understanding of what happened before that,” said Diana Schow, researcher and visiting assistant professor in the community and public health department at Idaho State University.
Elizabeth Cartwright, a professor of anthropology at Idaho State University, said the inconsistent data can be dangerous to Idahoans.
“We need to have websites where you can go and you can trust them,” Cartwright said. “The case loads are over 7,000 cases behind right now, unimaginable. It’s just wrong. We need to have up-to-date data, we need to understand positivity rates, case loads, number of beds.”
In the early months of the pandemic, Hispanics in Idaho were disproportionately represented in the positive COVID-19 cases, but today, the Department of Health and Welfare reports that Hispanics make up 8% of the total COVID-19 deaths in Idaho. About 16% of Idaho’s positive COVID-19 cases with known ethnicity are Hispanic.
The case count among Hispanics is improving, but the vaccination rate among Hispanics is lower than the statewide rate.
The COVID-19 vaccination rate for Hispanics in Idaho is 37%, according to data from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
The health department reports that 66,339 people who identify as Hispanic have been fully vaccinated in Idaho, though only 74% of vaccinated people have reported their ethnicity to their vaccine providers. There are 167,344 people in Idaho who are Hispanic and ages 12 and older, according to data provided to the Idaho Statesman from the health department.
The vaccination rate in Idaho, as of Friday, was 55.6% for those 12 and up. That lags behind the national vaccination rate of 68.3%.
The New York Times reported late last month that a Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed the share of vaccine-eligible Hispanics in the U.S. who have received at least one dose of the vaccine was 73%. The share of Hispanics in Idaho who have received at least one dose of the vaccine was 44% according to the Department of Health and Welfare.
Hispanics make up 13% of the population in Idaho, and they account for 11% of the state’s vaccinated people.
Hispanic COVID-19 case counts improve
Brianna Bodily, spokesperson for South Central Public Health District, said she is seeing cases among Hispanics move in a better direction than in the early months of the pandemic.
“Looking into our case data, we saw a hugely disproportionate number of cases in our Latinx community, and we are seeing that has normalized,” Bodily said. Latinx is the gender-neutral term for Latinos. “The percentage of cases in our residents who provide ethnicity data are consistent with the percentage of residents we have in those ethnicities. To see those numbers move in such a disproportionate level to move into proportional levels is good.”
Ashley Anderson, the Southwest District Health spokesperson, said that in September, the COVID-19 incidence rate for Hispanics in the Southwest District Health jurisdiction was 4.21 daily new cases per 10,000 residents, much lower than the total district-wide incidence rate of 6.86. The Southwest District includes Canyon, Adams, Gem, Owyhee, Payette and Washington counties.
In more rural parts of the state, Cartwright said, the first large outbreaks of COVID-19 happened at potato, meat and food packing and processing plants. “A lot of those drove the cases among Hispanics,” she said.
This disproportionate number of positive COVID-19 cases among Hispanics in the pandemic’s early weeks pushed health districts in heavily Latino areas to work with local providers, community organizers, faith-based leaders and others to ensure information about vaccines and how to protect yourself against COVID-19 got out to people.
Lindsay Haskell, communicable disease control manager for Central District Health, which includes Ada, Boise, Elmore and Valley counties, said ethnicity fields are supposed to be reported for every COVID-19 lab result, but many offices and labs do not ask.
Central District Health collects ethnicity data when it is reported, Haskell said in an email, but it often isn’t. The health district doesn’t post ethnicity data to its COVID-19 case dashboard.
Authorities reach out to Hispanic communities
The South Central Public Health District learned that it could not rely on the state data, so it began working with community members to understand and overcome obstacles between Latino communities and others and the COVID-19 vaccine, Bodily said.
The city of Nampa created the Hispanic/Latinx task force, and both Southwest District Health and Central District health participate in the biweekly meetings.
Anderson said the Southwest district also worked with community partners to gain trust among Latinos and to get COVID-19 information out to difficult-to-reach groups.
“Much of our work involves personally engaging with our Hispanic communities and partner organizations to get accurate and relevant information into the hands of those who need it,” Anderson said in an email.
Central District Health also works with Hispanic-reaching organizations including Centro de Comunidad y Justicia (Center for Community and Justice) and the Community Council of Idaho.
Schow and Cartwright conducted a research project in rural southeastern Idaho last spring in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University. Along with 20 university students, they interviewed 41 people in American Falls and Aberdeen about their experiences with COVID-19 and their feelings about the vaccine.
They found little resistance to the vaccine, and lack of formal education was not a barrier to wanting or receiving vaccinations. “Most of the study population wanted the vaccine because they wanted to continue to work and contribute to the security of their families and communities,” their report said.
But the local vaccination rates were below average. The researchers made a series of recommendations to improve public health in both Hispanic and non-Hispanic communities, and not just for COVID-19 vaccinations but for the long term.
Schow said the Idaho data they looked at reflected serious problems that limit understanding of COVID-19’s effects on ethnic communities.
“From a qualitative perspective, what we learned doing research is, data is not being collected consistently, and there is a lot of concern in terms of even asking the question, the person asking and person answering,” Schow said. “Until we untangle that, we are going to have a hard time understanding the big picture.”
In the Treasure Valley, Yanira Corvera, a former host on a show on La Gran D 106.7 FM, a local Spanish radio station, now hosts Facebook Live videos to answer COVID-19 questions and concerns. Corvera said she is hearing that most Latinos in the area are getting vaccinated. She said most people seem to at least be taking precautions against the virus, with only a few opposed to any precautions.
Employer-based vaccination clinics have helped get workers vaccinated across the state.
“There is this huge burden of suffering,” Cartwright said. “This community was hit hard and hit early and they clearly wanted those vaccines. And there were those vaccines that were offered at workplaces, and workplace vaccinations work.”
Learn more
South Central Public Health District updates its demographic data on its COVID-19 dashboard every Wednesday in both English and Spanish.
Southwest District Health has resources in Spanish on its COVID-19 resources page at phd3.idaho.gov/covid19/#1593641650446-8e5454e5-d5d1
Central District Health has COVID-19 vaccine information in Spanish at cdh.idaho.gov/covid-vaccine.php.
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare COVID-19 website can be translated into Spanish using the translating tool at the top.
This story was originally published November 8, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
