As Covid-19 vaccines continue to roll out across the country, many hospitals and clinics are giving priority to their own patients, leaving people who lack a primary-care doctor or a doctor affiliated with the right hospital struggling to find doses.
Health researchers say the trend is disproportionately affecting people in medically underserved communities.
Many states chose to distribute the vaccine first to hospitals, which then became the primary deliverer of the shot to their own healthcare workers and others who qualified. In many cases, people have to have a primary-care doctor affiliated with the hospital, or receive care from the hospital, to receive a shot there.
That means that people living in poorer communities without major hospitals often face an even harder time finding access to the still-scarce vaccine. The problem highlights one of the challenges officials face in the effort to vaccinate people equitably.
When Texans aged 65 and older and with certain medical conditions became eligible for Covid-19 vaccines, Jovana Sanchez-Melendez, a 35-year-old university director of technology near Dallas who has an autoimmune disease, received an email from her doctor to sign up for an appointment.