Dr. Anthony Fauci, who recently agreed to join the Biden administration as the White House’s chief medical adviser, is now working hard to dispel skepticism among black Americans about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine.
CNN reported that the nation’s top infectious disease expert spoke Tuesday at an event hosted by the National Urban League. Fauci said he understood the mistrust among some black Americans about the coronavirus vaccine given the history of racism in medical research.
Fauci said the two COVID-19 vaccines expected to be available to Americans starting this month are safe and effective. And he stressed the role of African-American scientists in vaccine development. Fauci also said he would publicly take the vaccine himself when available.
"The very vaccine that's one of the two that has absolutely exquisite levels -- 94 to 95% efficacy against clinical disease and almost 100% efficacy against serious disease that are shown to be clearly safe -- that vaccine was actually developed in my institute's vaccine research center by a team of scientists led by Dr. Barney Graham and his close colleague, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, or Kizzy Corbett," Fauci said.
"So, the first thing you might want to say to my African American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you're going to be taking was developed by an African American woman. And that is just a fact."
Corbett sent out the following Tweet with Fauci’s remarks from the meeting.
Corbett, 34, is the National Institute of Health’s lead scientist for coronavirus vaccine research . Her team has developed an mRNA vaccine in collaboration with the Moderna biotechnology company. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to give emergency use authorization for use of the Moderna vaccine this month.
On Friday night, the FDA approved emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, a German firm headed by a Muslim Turkish-German couple, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci.
A recent Pew Research Survey found that African-Americans were among the most skeptical about taking the vaccine.
The survey found that just over four out of 10 African Americans would take the vaccine. Eight out of 10 Asian Americans indicated they would get a COVID-19 vaccine if one were available, and just over six out of 10 white and Hispanic adults indicated they would get vaccinated.
The mistrust is understandable given such cases of abuse as the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis study in which federal health officials withheld proper treatment for African Americans with the disease.
The coronavirus has disproportionately affected POC, particularly black Americans, due to higher incidences of diseases like diabetes and limited access to adequate health care.
Corbett told CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta in a podcast that she is well aware of vaccine hesitancy in black communities.
"I would say to people who are vaccine-hesitant that you've earned the right to ask the questions that you have around these vaccines and this vaccine development process," she said in an episode of the CNN podcast “Coronavirus: Fact or Fiction.”
“Trust, especially when it has been stripped from people, has to be rebuilt in a brick-by-brick fashion,” Corbett said. “And so, what I say to people firstly is that I empathize, and then secondly is that I’m going to do my part in laying those bricks. And I think that if everyone on our side, as physicians and scientists, went about it that way, then the trust would start to be rebuilt.”