The figures are still partial, but they leave little room for doubt. Across the United States where it is known, the proportion of African-Americans swept away by the Covid-19 epidemic far exceeds their share of the population.
This gap is particularly striking in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, where blacks account for 70% of deaths, while accounting for only 26% of the population. But it is just as high in Chicago, Illinois (67% of deaths for only 32% of the population), or even in Louisiana (70% of deaths for 32% of the population), according to figures from the Washington Post.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Wednesday, April 8, the first national results that confirm this trend. African-Americans account for 33% of hospitalizations related to the pandemic while they account for only 13% of the population. The figures are 45% and 64% for whites, respectively.
Donald Trump was alarmed at this during his daily briefing on Tuesday, noting "Increased impacts" on the African American community. "We are doing everything in our power to meet this challenge, it is a huge challenge, it is terrible, to provide support to the African American citizens of this country who are particularly affected", he added. "It is disproportionate, they are very badly affected", he insisted.
High rates of uninsured
Present at this briefing, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, who has become the most respected medical figure in this crisis according to a poll published Wednesday by the Morning Consult institute, provided elements of answers. "We have a particularly difficult problem of exacerbating a health disparity", he admitted. "We have known, literally forever, that diseases like diabetes, hypertension, obesity and asthma disproportionately affect minority populations, especially African Americans", he noted.
"Unfortunately, when you look at the health history that leads to a poor outcome with the coronavirus, which leads people to intensive care units, which requires intubation and often leads to death, it is only these same co-morbidities which, unfortunately, are disproportionately prevalent in the African-American population ”, he explained. “So we are very concerned about this. It's very sad. There is nothing we can do right now, except to try to give them the best possible care to avoid these complications ", concluded Mr. Fauci.
