It has been reported that black people and other people of color in America die from COVID-19 more than any other group.
Is there an answer? Is it by design? Is there something wrong with being Black? The CDC found that 33% of people who’ve been hospitalized with COVID-19 are African American, yet only 13% of the U.S. population is African American. Some local communities have found a similar pattern in their data. Among the many (26) states reporting racial data on COVID-19, Blacks account for 34% of COVID deaths.
The data while not complete points to an alarming truth:
In Chicago, a recent report found that 70 percent of people who died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, are Black even though the city’s population is just 30 percent Black.
In Louisiana, Blacks represent about one-third of the state population but 70% of COVID-19 deaths.
Blacks in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin represent roughly 45% of diagnoses and over 70% of deaths.
In Michigan, Blacks are also over-represented for deaths related to COVID-19 accounting for 40% of all deaths statewide.
In Chicago, Blacks represent 70% of people who have died from coronavirus.
In New York, African Americans comprise 9 percent of the state population and 17 percent of the deaths.
In urban centers large and small across the U.S., the novel coronavirus is devastating African American communities. The environments where most live, the jobs they have, the prevalence of health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and how they are treated by the medical establishment have created a toxic storm of severe illness and death.
Why is the impact so outsized on African Americans?
“Look in our community: You see food deserts, transportation deserts, and education deserts,” said Dr. Celia J. Maxwell, an infectious disease physician and associate dean at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C. “All the social determinants of health that you would look to [in order to] keep the community in good health are missing from our communities of color.”
“With persons of color, and African Americans specifically, there are so many issues they are dealing with—health, socio-economic, poverty, education and systematic racism,” Maxwell added. “With all those things together, it doesn’t surprise me that these patients would be more vulnerable to something like COVID-19. It’s the healthcare disparity that’s driving the epidemic.
Other contributing factors, health disparities experts say, are the close-knit nature of family, friends and church in the black community. Added to that is overcrowding in urban areas and homes where multiple generations might share space.
