About 18 percent of Latino respondents said they did not yet have permanent residential status in the US. Although the Biden administration and local health authorities have reiterated that the recordings are available to everyone regardless of immigration status, more than half of this group said they were unsure whether they would be eligible for the recordings.
Updated
May 16, 2021, 9:09 p.m. ET
Nearly 40 percent of all unvaccinated Latinos who responded to the survey feared they would need to show government-issued ID in order to qualify. And about a third said they feared the shot would endanger either their immigrant status or that of a family member.
Many health departments have been taking increasingly inventive steps to attract Spanish speakers and reassure them that their immigration status will not be jeopardized, said Erin Mann, program manager for the National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants, and Migrants at the University of Minnesota, which guides communities on best practices advises to reach underserved people. This includes language-specific drive-on lanes for tests and vaccinations, running events in the evening, and telephoning health care workers to sign them up.
The survey results come from a nationally representative telephone poll conducted April 15-29 of 2,097 adults, including 778 English- and Spanish-speaking Latinos.
The report of the results also examined the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Latino families, which explained their willingness to be vaccinated. About 38 percent of Latino adults said a relative or close friend had died from Covid-19, compared with 18 percent of white adults who said they had similar experiences. Two-thirds of adults in Latino said they feared either they or a relative could contract the coronavirus. Financial fears related to the pandemic have also plagued Latino families. Almost half said they had been economically affected, compared with about a third of white respondents who said so.
While about a third of non-vaccinated Latino adults wanted to get a shot as soon as possible, two-thirds hesitated and described themselves as waiting and seeing (35 percent) only when it was necessary for work (13 percent) or definitely not (17 percent). However, this group appeared to be accessible to incentive strategies, the report said. Better access would be helpful for them.
More than half of this group, overall hesitant and also busy, said they would get the chance if their employers gave them paid time off to recover from side effects, a rate almost three times as high like those of the white workers. (The Biden government has urged companies to take the action.) And 38 percent of that group would like to be vaccinated if their employer arranges for the shots to be distributed on site. Almost four in ten respondents said they would be more likely to get the shot if their employer offered a $ 200 incentive to do so.
