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Howard University, other HBCUs open clinics to help distribute coronavirus vaccines

InternationalFeb 13. 2021

By The Washington Post, Lauren Lumpkin and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel

WASHINGTON – The medical school dean dashed between vaccine stations, assisting nurses administering doses to patients and saying hello to people waiting for shots. He also greeted the men and women who stood in line at the Howard University College of Medicine on Thursday, thanking them for coming.

Howard opened a clinic this week on its campus in the District of Columbia to help increase access to coronavirus vaccines. Staff at the university’s hospital called their patients personally to invite them to get vaccinated, debunk myths and ease any fears.

“We encourage them, we try to . . . explain to them that it’s safe,” Hugh Mighty, Howard’s medical school dean, said.

Howard and other historically Black colleges and universities have emerged as partners in the country’s coronavirus rollout, serving not only as clinics for vaccines but also working to engender trust in the inoculations.

“If you look at the proportion of people of color who have died from the virus, it’s been disproportionate,” Mighty said. “As an HBCU who is connected to the community and has some trust in that community, we certainly try to make sure that we’re paying attention.”

A similar effort is underway at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. In the past month, the school has vaccinated about 950 people in surrounding Davidson County. The school has also conducted clinical trials and administered coronavirus tests during the pandemic.

“It was important for us to do our part in participating in the clinical trials . . . so that when we got to the point of encouraging individuals of color to get the vaccine, we would have been there from the inception,” said Cherae Farmer-Dixon, dean of the School of Dentistry at Meharry, who heads the university’s vaccine clinic.

Farmer-Dixon said that while distrust of the vaccine remains a constant, there has been an outpouring of interest from Black people who want to learn more about the shot and when they can get one. Now, the biggest hurdles are limited supply and a vaccination schedule that Farmer-Dixon worries is a mismatch for the community.

Nashville is inoculating residents ages 75 and older, but some of the greatest need is among younger Black and Latino people with preexisting conditions, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, Farmer-Dixon said.

“You have to meet people where they are,” Farmer-Dixon said. “Have mobile vaccine sites, have pop-up vaccine sites in African American and Hispanic communities. The other part of that is partnering with people in those communities that people trust.”

Meharry is working with the city and state on those issues. Being a partner of the county health department in vaccine distribution means Meharry can directly voice concerns about disparities in distribution of the vaccine, Farmer-Dixon said. That’s an invaluable position, she said, to get the community’s needs met and further gain their trust.

The nation’s four Black medical schools – Howard, Meharry, the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in California – are working together toward that end.

“There is power in numbers,” Farmer-Dixon said. “Talking to and educating not only our immediate community but working with the three other Black medical schools so that we are all having the same conversations within our communities is important.”

The push among HBCUs to support the vaccination effort has not been without challenges. Last fall, the presidents of Dillard and Xavier universities – two historically Black schools in Louisiana – encouraged their campuses to enroll in clinical vaccine trials in which they had participated. The backlash was swift.

“Sorry, not using my child as a guinea pig,” one woman commented on Xavier’s Facebook page. Skeptics also referenced Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee syphilis study – two medical cases that deepened distrust of health providers within the Black community. “While I understand the necessity of a diverse pool of candidates to test the vaccine, why start with HBCUs?” another person wrote.

“I get the fear, but . . . we’re dying disproportionately,” Walter Kimbrough,president of Dillard, said in an interview last fall. “We’re disproportionately hospitalized. We’ve disproportionately lost our jobs. We’re disproportionately impacted by this virus, so why wouldn’t you do something that would protect you so you can go earn a living again?”

This week, Kimbrough said some of the skepticism has died down as more prominent Black leaders have stepped up to build community confidence in the vaccine. The university’s chief medical officer, for example, has shared information during the pandemic as an on-air contributor for a television station in New Orleans.

“We’ve got to have more people like that who can speak to us where we are,” Kimbrough, who is Black, said. “We need more trusted people who look like us who are doctors. We need way more people doing public health, the education part.”

Presidents, including Wayne Frederick at Howard University and David Wilson from Morgan State University, have publicized their getting their vaccinations in hopes of sending the message to skeptics that the treatment is safe.

Black churches have teamed up with clinics to convince their congregations to take the vaccine. In a special aired on BET, actor, director and studio head Tyler Perry spoke to medical experts and received his shot on-air.

People are warming up to the idea of getting their shots, but there is more work to do.

“Louisiana is just getting into the mass vaccination sites . . . and to have some in some spaces that are familiar with Black folks is good,” Kimbrough said. “We have to keep doing these kinds of things.”

InclusivCare, a health-care provider in Louisiana, is in talks with Dillard to use the campus as a vaccination site. The university has already offered drive-through and walk-up testing for area residents.

Florida A&M University in Tallahassee is also preparing to assist in the state’s vaccine rollout, Larry Robinson, the school’s president, said at a recent event with other HBCU leaders. Encouraged by the success of the school’s testing clinic – which has administered more than 250,000 tests since April – Robinson said the school also has a responsibility to ensure the community is vaccinated.

“We really need to get the word out,” Robinson said, adding that leaders at historically Black institutions have a “much better chance of convincing folks in our communities to get vaccinated.”

“If people don’t come get vaccinated, then we’re going to suffer unduly, and we’ve seen the suffering already, the disparities, the death,” he said.

That anxiety is what pushed Tasya Bracey, a 46-year-old chef from Bowie, Md., to get vaccinated on Howard’s campus Thursday.

“Death is not fun,” Bracey said, adding she has an 8-year-old daughter who needs her.

Bracey, one of 500 people to receive a dose of the Pfizer vaccine at Howard this week, said she did not hesitate to get inoculated. She was encouraged by friends who are doctors and vouched for the treatment.

Now that she’s finished with both doses, Bracey said she’s not in a rush to go live her life like she did before the pandemic.

“I’m not going to change,” she said. “I’m still going to have my mask on. I still won’t hug my mom.”

Mumbi Carter, 72, said she will also continue to wear a mask and avoid crowds. She received her final dose of the vaccine Thursday and is hopeful more people in her community will follow suit.

Carter, from Suitland, Md., encouraged people to “listen to the science.”

Carter’s friend, 75-year-old Johnnie Harris, compared the vaccine to wearing a shield.

“It’s a small price to pay to help the community,” Harris said about 15 minutes after getting the shot. “I feel great.”

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U.S. will not require passengers to get covid test before domestic flights

InternationalFeb 13. 2021

By The Washington Post, Lori Aratani

WASHINGTON – Federal health officials said they will not require domestic travelers to show proof that they have tested negative for the coronavirus before boarding flights, a measure that had drawn vocal opposition from airline industry.

“At this time, CDC is not recommending required point of departure testing for domestic travel,” the agency said in a statement issued Friday evening. “As part of our close monitoring of the pandemic, in particular the continued spread of variants, we will continue to review public health options for containing and mitigating spread of COVID-19 in the travel space.”

Earlier in the day, White House officials met with the heads of several major U.S. carriers, all of whom were vehemently opposed to such a mandate.

“We appreciated the opportunity to meet with the administration this morning,” said Nicholas Calio, chief executive of Airlines for America, who was among those who met with Jeff Zients, the administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, and other officials. “We had a very positive, constructive conversation focused on our shared commitment to science-based policies as we work together to end the pandemic, restore air travel and lead our nation toward recovery.”

Following that meeting, the Biden administration signaled that it did not plan to put a testing requirement in place.

“Reports that there is an intention to put in new requirements such as testing are not accurate,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

In interviews this week, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said there was an “active conversation” with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about a testing program.

Federal health officials last month began requiring all international travelers to show proof that they had tested negative for the coronavirus before boarding flights to the United States, with the goal of reducing the spread of the virus and its variants. About the same time, CDC officials said they also were weighing a similar testing requirement for domestic travelers.

That idea drew sharp pushback from airlines, unions and some lawmakers, who said it would be logistically impossible to launch and would further harm an industry struggling to stay afloat. Chief executives at several major airlines pointed to passenger declines on international routes after the testing requirement took effect, even though many had supported the decision.

Most health experts agree that ramping up testing can be an effective strategy for identifying and isolating those who might have the virus, particularly individuals who show no signs of infection.

A report this week from a team of researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and funded by the aviation industry said testing can play a key role in stopping the spread of the virus.

“Viral testing is an important public health screening mechanism that can quickly and efficiently identify those with infections and stop them from undergoing activities that could expose others, including potential travel,” said the report, which recommended steps that airports could take to reduce the risk that travelers could catch the virus.

Edward Nardell, a member of the study team and professor in the departments of environmental health and immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said testing might also offer another benefit to travelers: peace of mind.

“I know I’d feel much more comfortable, particularly in a long flight, if I had some assurance that no one on that flight is carrying detectable virus at the time you take off, but there are enormous logistics,” he said. “It can be done on a small scale, [but] the question is what would it take to do it on a large scale and that’s where we get into the unknowns from our perspective.”

There also are questions about who would pay for the tests.

Henry Wu, an associate professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and director of the Emory TravelWell Center, said while such a strategy could be effective at preventing infected passengers from bringing the virus to the United States, a domestic mandate might be less effective since people can use other modes to move between states. One exception, Hawaii, has a testing requirement for visitors who want to avoid quarantine, he said.

Still, Wu said, testing airlines passengers could make sense in some instances.

“Covid-19 is already present in all states, but a key goal of testing is to limit spread of the new variants that have not widely circulated yet,” he said. “Airline passengers are probably traveling farther, so a test requirement before flying could help slow the spread, but the impact would depend on the relative number of travelers using other modes of transportation.”

Despite their opposition to a testing mandate, many airlines and airports have seized on preflight testing as a way to add an extra layer of assurance to nervous travelers.

In November, United Airlines announced it would offer free testing to passengers on select flights between Newark Liberty International Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport, effectively guaranteeing that everyone on board had tested negative for the coronavirus before departure. At least two dozen U.S. airports also now offer coronavirus testing on-site.