“It is devastating to see those numbers and know that they are not numbers, but rather lives, families and communities that are beaten”Lightfood said Monday that it would present a plan to influence information about the disease in the city’s African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods.
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Two days later, New York City Hall revealed that Hispanics, who are 29% of the city’s population, account for 34% of covid-19 deaths and are the community hardest hit by the disease in the city. It has become the epicenter of the disease in the United States, followed by African Americans, who are 28% of the deceased despite representing only 22% of the population.
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“This makes me very angry”, Mayor Bill De Blasio regretted. “The pain and deaths the coronavirus is causing dovetail with other profound disparities that we have seen for decades.”
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Although at the moment only some cities and states are showing data disaggregated by race and ethnicity, the numbers that are known indicate the trends in Chicago and New York are not unique.
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The first indications show that the disease caused by the new coronavirus, covid-19, is especially hitting black and Hispanic neighborhoods, something that authorities and experts attribute to pre-existing diseases linked to poverty that make them more vulnerable, to the lack of access to the health system and to the nature of their work that makes them more exposed.
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And before New York City revealed the first official data, a report from ProPublica It showed that some of the neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by the virus were mostly Latino, such as Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst or Corona, in Queens.
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“This map shows us a stark reality. The coronavirus is hitting low-income and communities of color in an extraordinary way,” Councilman Mark D. Levine wrote on his Twitter account, along with a plan that reflects the incidence of the disease. Postal Code.
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While we & # 39; re waiting for a breakdown by race in NYC, this map tells a stark story. Coronavirus is hitting low-income communities of color extraordinarily hard: pic.twitter.com/ZSCT64MZoq
– Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) April 3, 2020
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Poor migrant communities, “the epicenter in NY”
“In New York, the feeling I have is that the epicenter of the epicenter is the poor migrant communities in this city: most workers who continue to work in restaurants, cooking, making deliveries, Driving trains, caring for children and the elderly, or cleaning streets are immigrants or African-Americans, “Ana María Archila, director of the progressive organization Center for Popular Democracy, told Univision Noticias.
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“They are working people or poor people. Those are the frontworkers“adds Archila, who says he supports his theory in his own experience. According to what he said, since the pandemic began to plague the city, the virus has already taken 9 Hispanic members of Make The Road New York, an organization of which she was the director that defends workers and migrants.
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Paradoxically, essential workers, those who keep society running amid the pandemic and that they continue to go out on the street and on many occasions take public transportation so that the rest of the country can have food on the table and keeping basic services running are also the most unprotected.
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Latinos and African-Americans are overrepresented in low-wage and hourly jobs where remote work is not an option, as recalled by Steven Lopez, director of health policy for the non-governmental organization UnidosUS. “We also know that most Latinos are not eligible for sick leave,” he added in statements to Univision Noticias.
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With pre-existing diseases and without access to health
Hispanics are, in fact, the group with highest rate of uninsured in the US and the recent public charge standard it was already inhibiting many from applying for benefits like Medicaid (which offers health services to low-income people), despite being eligible.
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According to UnidosUS data, 18% of Latinos are uninsured compared to 5% of non-Hispanic whites. For children, 8.1% of Latino children are uninsured compared to 4.2% of non-Latinos.
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“Statistics were increasing for Latino children before this, so you can imagine the situation now with families who are losing their jobs and potentially their insurance as well,” says Lopez. “And without health insurance it is even more difficult for them to access the health they need to be tested and get treatments” for coronavirus.
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For him, the key point to understand The data showing a higher incidence of the disease in Latino and black communities is that the virus is exacerbating historical inequalities.
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Archila agrees on this, who believes that covid-19 has made communities that live more precariously and without support systems even more vulnerable. And that, in his opinion, is also reflected in his health.
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“The fact that people have been poor all their lives shows in their bodies, in the type of diseases they have, in the prevalence of asthma in the poorest neighborhoods, in the high rate of chronic diseases and the fact that people really have to work and risk their lives to be able to eat “, Explain.
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In search of solutions
That same theory is shared by Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, who on Monday referred to the prevalence of diabetes and respiratory and heart diseases in the black and Latino neighborhoods of the city where the virus has the highest incidence.
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So he instructed his team to focus on those communities to contact residents over 50 and those with pre-existing illnesses to give them information on prevention and resources to deal with the disease. Also, signed an order for undocumented immigrants to have access to benefits s offered to the rest of the population during the covid-19 emergency.
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For her part, the city’s public health commissioner ordered medical service providers to collect more comprehensive information on the race and ethnicity of infected patients in order to better combat the gaps between different sectors of the population.
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And precisely that is one of the keys with which Steven Lopez believes that the disease must be faced. “We have an idea of how the coronavirus is impacting our communities, but we need the data to have an informed public response and decide, for example, where we need more test centers or where treatments are needed,” he said.
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In addition, it considers that to protect the most vulnerable, Medicaid should be extended so that all citizens can be tested for the coronavirus and access treatments if necessary, regardless of their immigration status.
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For her part, Archila believes that the response must also pass because the government includes all vulnerable communities in its economic relief measures.
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“Undocumented communities have been excluded from all aid from the government’s plan,” he maintains. “Governments have to focus on filling the gaps and gaps that all families are falling into and that are making this not a democratic pandemic but rather deepening the inequality gap in our society.”
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