Editorial: Maryland must do more to get COVID vaccine to African American, LatinX communities

We know it’s early in the COVID-19 vaccine game, but preliminary data show the most vulnerable demographics, people of color who are most likely to contract the virus and die from it, are already getting left behind. In Maryland, about 16% of the first doses for which race data is available went to African Americans, and 4.6% to Latino people. White people have received 66% of the first shots. Nationwide, a similar pattern is forming. A report by Kaiser Health News found that in 16 states that have released data by race, white residents are being vaccinated in many cases at two to three times higher the rates of African Americans and Latinos.