Eastern Crescent’s Path to Get Past Pandemic is Rough

Finding a way out proves elusive for East Austin and beyond.

One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the rollout of vaccines against the disease has revealed a light at the end of Austin’s coronavirus tunnel. But that proverbial light is not shining brightly on everyone.

Since last spring, the COVID crisis has exposed and entrenched Central Texas’ long-standing health and social disparities. The worst impacts of the disease – the highest rates of infection, hospitalization, and death – have been among communities of color, for several reasons. As essential workers, Black and Latinx Austinites have endured greater risks of contracting COVID and then transmitting it within their households. Concurrent chronic medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes have increased the risk and severity of COVID infection.

And residents in disadvantaged neighborhoods throughout East Austin and the outlying Eastern Crescent (the arc of settlements around and beyond the SH 130 toll road) have less access to health care services. While Latinx Austinites account for just over one-third of Travis County’s population, they account for nearly half of COVID-related deaths, according to Austin Public Health data.

These disparities persist as vaccines are slowly but surely distributed throughout the metro area. Data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows 12.9% of Travis County’s Hispanic population is fully vaccinated as of March 15; only 2.4% of the county’s Black population is fully vaccinated. Using state data, as of March 2, the 78617 ZIP code (Del Valle, the area around Austin-Bergstrom International Airport) has received the fewest vaccine doses per 1,000 people of all Travis County ZIP codes, according to Matt Worthington, a vice president of the Del Valle Community Coalition and a senior project manager for data initiatives at UT-Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs.

As COVID-19 continues to ravage these communities, city and county leaders, grassroots orgs, and local health agencies are searching for immediate solutions.

Until scarcity is no longer the norm, vaccine prioritization remains complicated and only partly within the control of local policymakers.