Harris has reportedly pushed Biden's coronavirus team to focus on overlooked communities

Kamala Harris.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

After Vice President Kamala Harris received her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in a televised event at the National Institutes of Health in January, Rep. Joyce Beatty's (D-Ohio) phone lit up with calls from constituents who were "newly curious" about getting vaccinated themselves, she told The New York Times.

As Beatty explained, watching a Black woman receive the vaccine "gave people hope and gave people education." Black Americans are nearly three times more likely to die from the coronavirus, the Times notes, but they are far less likely to be inoculated, in large part because of a lack of access, but also, some experts have pointed out, because of longstanding wariness about government-driven health programs.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.