Covid-19: Black people and other minorities are hardest hit in US
Owen Dyer
Abstract
In the United States, black people are being admitted to hospital and dying in disproportionate numbers from the covid-19 pandemic. The Trump administration acknowledged the issue after a Washington Post analysis found that black majority counties had three times the coronavirus infection rate and almost six times the death rate of white majority counties.1 The excess deaths among African-Americans “are shining a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, adding that at least part of the problem was due to a higher burden of underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and asthma among African-Americans. “There’s nothing we can do about it right now except to try and give them the best possible care to avoid complications,” he said. The true scale of the disparity is unknown because so few states and counties include racial data in their …