This podcast is brought to you in part by PNAS Science Sessions, a production of the proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences. Science Sessions offers brief yet insightful discussions

with some of the world's top researchers. Just in time for the spooky season of Halloween,

we invite you to explore the extraordinary hunting abilities of spiders featuring impressive

aerial maneuvers and webs that function as sensory antennas, follow science sessions,

on popular podcast platforms like iTunes, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Welcome to COVID Quickly, a new scientific American podcast series.

This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science

behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research

and we help you understand what it really means. I'm Tanya Lewis. I'm Josh Fishman.

And we're scientific American senior health editors. Today we're going to be talking about

the barriers, slack, and Latino people face and getting COVID vaccines.

How your immune system strikes back against coronavirus variants.

And what the heck is going on with the AstraZeneca vaccine?

The pace of COVID vaccinations is picking up in the US.

More than 87 million people have gotten at least one dose.

Still, communities hit hardest by the disease are getting left behind.

Who are they? And what's the trouble?

It's true that states are opening up vaccination to more and more people.

But black and Latino people are still getting vaccinated at lower rates than white and Asian people.

Despite getting sick and dying at higher numbers from COVID.

I know you did some reporting on this with our colleague,

...