LOS ANGELES, Calif. — There is something that stands in Conception Gutierrez’s way of living with less anxiety for the rest of the pandemic. 

“I felt nervous, but I was encouraged by my daughter,” said 86-year-old Gutierrez, a Garden resident.

Gutierrez’s daughter, Gemma Briggs, escorted her to get her last coronavirus vaccine dose at St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in Florence. Gutierrez said it took several tries to get an appointment and she is the last person among her friends to get the vaccine despite her vulnerability to contracting the virus.

The lack of access to the vaccine is what St. John’s president and CEO Jim Mangia said is happening in East, Central, and South Los Angeles.

“Low income communities and communities of color were disproportionately impacted by the COVID pandemic,” said Mangia.

The center leader said the state’s web-based system requires residents, like 86-year-old Gutierrez, to use the internet to book appointments.

“When you open up a community vaccine pod in Prepmod or MyTurn, it’s immediately inundated with folks who don’t live in the communities that we serve,” he said.

In collaboration with Spectrum News 1’s partners at Crosstown, a non-profit news organization covering the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, data was compiled to see how the 2.7 million doses have been distributed among 270 different neighborhoods in the county.

In communities like Florence, where St. John’s has a clinic, only 7% of its residents have received their vaccine doses. While cities like Bel Air which has fewer residents than the city of Florence, has received more doses.

“If folks from Beverly Hills or the West Side are taking those appointments and driving into South L.A., they’re taking away from people who need it,” said Mangia.

In an effort to prevent people from cheating the system and crossing zip code boundaries, St. John’s self-funded a hotline to help people without internet book appointments.

“That call center is costing us $125,000 a month just to keep the operators online and to keep the phones up,” said Mangia. 

He said his centers are vaccinating 20,000 patients a week and are approaching 80,000. Even though this endeavor is expensive, Mangia said his team has something that is keeping them motivated to serve.

“It’s the happiness people show after they get vaccinated. The relief, the security that they feel and the fact that we can provide a service to people in need. We can give vaccines to people so that they can get back to work, they can get back to seeing their families, they can get back to seeing their grandchildren,” said Mangia.

Gutierrez’s first words after getting her second dose were, “Thank you, Lord.”

“The protection is always from him. I am so glad I have this dose. I feel safer and very confident,” said Gutierrez.

With her new sense of relief about the pandemic, Gutierrez says she hopes St. John’s will continue to protect the community that needs it the most.

For more information, visit wellchild.org.