Pandemic Watch: African Americans at higher risk of COVID-19 impact in U.S. (Xinhua/Tan Yixoao, Hu Yousong)
"It's not that they are getting infected more often. It's that when they do get infected, their underlying medical conditions … wind them up in the ICU."
WASHINGTON, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Public health experts on the White House's coronavirus response team has confirmed that while the COVID-19 pandemic poses threat to everyone, the disease shows a racial disparity that puts African Americans at higher risk of getting seriously ill.
Anthony Fauci, member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and the country's top infectious diseases expert, said during the task force's news briefing that the virus outbreak is "shining a bright light" on the "unacceptable" health disparities between blacks and whites.
"Yet again, when you have a situation like the coronavirus, they are suffering disproportionately," Fauci said, referring to the minorities. "It's not that they are getting infected more often. It's that when they do get infected, their underlying medical conditions … wind them up in the ICU."
Healthcare workers carry a patient to an ambulance outside Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital during the coronavirus pandemic in New York, the United States, April 8, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)
Echoing Fauci, Deborah Birx, the team's response coordinator, said officials and experts "don't want to give the impression that the African American community is more susceptible to the virus. We don't have any data that suggests that."
Noting that officials have been communicating with the African-American community in an effort to send a clearer message about the virus's risks, Birx added: "What our data suggests is they are more susceptible to more difficult and severe disease and poorer outcomes."
In recent days, officials from some of the coronavirus hotspots in the United States, including Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, all highlighted the vulnerability of African Americans to contagion.
In Louisiana, for instance, more than 70 percent of the coronavirus deaths were African American patients, who make up just 32 percent of the state's population, according to Edwards.
Some 72 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in Chicago are among the black people, who make up 30 percent of the metropolis' population, said Lightfoot. De Blasio said New York City is planning to release race-specific data regarding the pandemic.
A drive-through COVID-19 testing site is seen in Landover, Maryland, the United States, on April 8, 2020. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)
Government officials as well as physicians and epidemiologists said that black people have historically suffered more from poverty, exposure to underlying health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as poor housing environment, among other disadvantageous conditions.
Calling for urgent actions to tackle the inequalities, a group of Democratic lawmakers -- led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Ayanna Pressley from the same state -- sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar on March 27, calling for sharing comprehensive demographic information when publishing coronavirus-related data.
A woman wearing face protection walks near NYU Langone Medical Center during the coronavirus pandemic in New York, the United States, April 8, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)
"Any attempt to contain COVID-19 in the United States will have to address its potential spread in low-income communities of color, first and foremost to protect the lives of people in those communities, but also to slow the spread of the virus in the country as a whole," they wrote.
"This lack of information will exacerbate existing health disparities and result in the loss of lives in vulnerable communities," the letter warned.
In a statement issued on March 30, Warren said: "Decades of structural racism have prevented so many black and brown families from accessing quality health care, affordable housing and financial security, and the coronavirus crisis is blowing these disparities wide open."
Warren is a former progressive candidate in the 2020 presidential election who has already dropped out.
(Article by Xinhua Reporter Deng Xianlai) ■