Beverly Hills residents come to Latino neighborhoods to get vaccinated

Residents of Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles get vaccinated in the mobile clinics with which county Health authorities try to bring vaccines to Latino residents of neighborhoods of working families.

Supervisor Hilda Solís declared herself very upset to learn that at a vaccination event open to the public at the Ramona Gardens Residential Project for low-income families in Boyle Heights, a person from Beverly Hills was found, and It was not the only one.

The county sent a mobile vaccination module to that housing center with some 600 vaccines for the elderly of 65 years with the intention of reaching mainly Latinos who reside in the area and have found it difficult to get vaccinated.

But Supervisor Solís said she was “very alarmed to hear that people (who do not live in the project) had gained access to the code that had been released for just a few hours before the clinic was installed. ”

With the barcode provided by the state Department of Health, residents of other areas where these vaccines were not intended were obtained appointments through the internet portal that the state activated for that purpose.

Solís, president of the Council of Supervisors, denounced that people who sneak from wealthy areas to assigned mobile clinics for neighborhoods of working families, not only do they manage to make an appointment, but “somehow they were able to get in line before the people for whom the event was intended.”

That problem It had previously been seen at events in clinics and mobile modules in South and East Los Angeles, and even District 4 Supervisor Janice Hahn urged understanding.

Hahn said many Los Angeles County residents are fearful of the pandemic, despair, and wish they could get it. r vaccines as soon as possible, but distribution is insufficient for everyone.

However, residents of the west of the city of Los Angeles do have many advantages to get vaccinated over the inhabitants of low-income neighborhoods.

The medical director of the Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero Community Clinic, Dr. Don García, told Real America News that many residents of low-income neighborhoods lack technological and economic resources, which puts them at a disadvantage compared to residents and hospitals in the west of the city.

“Most of our patients do not have their own vehicle, they have to use transport public to move; so asking them to go to the stadium or distant vaccination centers, for them implies long trips and a lot of time “, said Dr. García.

” Most of them are essential workers, who do not they can stop working and spend a whole day going to a place to try to get the vaccine, “said the doctor. Many of them are not allowed to be absent either.

On the other hand, there are undocumented patients and residents who, despite the fact that the Health authorities insist that they can be vaccinated without fear, like any other another resident, they are still afraid.

Additionally, now that the vaccines are applied in the phase of people older than 65 years, Dr. García says that few Latino immigrants of that age use cell phones and even fewer know how to navigate online to enter the state portal to make appointments to be vaccinated.

García said that it is, for the most part, a community that lacks internet, even lacks the resources to pay for that service.

Supervisor Solís said that this is “again a situation in the one that the lack of internet access puts people at a disadvantage. ”

He acknowledged that“ there are those who do not have the capacity to sit at home and work on the internet because they have to go out go and work to put food on the table. It reminds me that this is a society of inequality and, I hate to say it, but of discrimination. ”

The supervisor said that she expected the The problem of people who take advantage and get vaccinated outside their sector must be corrected before the county starts a more extensive plan.

The director of Health in the county, Bárbara Ferrer , said this week that the number of places used as vaccination modules will be expanded to reach a more needy population.

On the other hand, when answering a question precisely about the displacement of wealthy neighborhood residents in search of vaccines in working-family neighborhoods, Governor Gavin Newsom said he will order that instead of clinic or module barcodes being used, the state provide personal or individual barcodes.

The governor did not say, however, if the change will take time.