AMERICAN BLACKS AFFECTED BY THE EPIDEMIC
According to AFP, which has collected statistics from several American jurisdictions, black Americans are particularly affected by the Coronavirus epidemic.
In Illinois, blacks represent 14% of the population but 42% of deaths from the epidemic. In Chicago, 72% of the dead, while they represent less than a third of the inhabitants. Disparities that “take your breath away,” said the city’s mayor. In Washington, 13 of the 22 dead were black. In North Carolina, 31% of the dead were black, compared to 22% of the population. In Louisiana, where New Orleans is located, the disproportion is even greater: 33% of the inhabitants are black but 70% of the dead were.
How to explain it?
For Jerome Adams, Chief Physician of the United States, the explanation is this
“We know that black people are more likely to have diabetes, heart and lung disease.” These diseases increase the risk of complications from Covid-19, Chinese and European experiences have shown.
For Georges Benjamin, president of the American Public Health Association (APHA), blacks in the United States are more exposed to the coronavirus than better-off populations, in their daily life or their work. “This population faces the general public more,” he says. “They are more often bus drivers, they take more public transport, they work more in retirement homes, shops and supermarkets.”
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