In several regions of the United States, the Covid-19 disproportionately kills blacks, according to multiple officials who demand the publication of national statistics to understand the extent of the phenomenon.
For the moment, the statistics are published in a disparate way, according to the States and the cities, and do not allow to understand if an inequality specific to Covid-19 is at work, or if the disproportion does nothing but reflect the inequalities socio-economic and access to care that historically affects black people in this country.
In Louisiana, 70% of the dead were black
The state of New York, the biggest American center of the epidemic, does not publish statistics by what the Americans call "race" and ethnicity (Black, White, Asian, Hispanic ...), a component which usually makes part of the statistical landscape in the United States for all fields, from economics to education and health, and appears on census forms.
But other jurisdictions have chosen to publish figures that are alarming: 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, Lori Lightfoot.
In Washington, 13 of the 22 dead were black. "I am very afraid of the disproportionate impact that this virus will have on African-Americans," the mayor of the American capital, Muriel Bowser, said on MSNBC on Tuesday. 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.
Black patients are prescribed fewer exams
"We know that black people are more likely to have diabetes, heart and lung disease," US chief medical officer Jerome Adams told CBS on Tuesday. These diseases increase the risk of complications from Covid-19; Chinese and European experiences have shown this.
Himself Black, Jerome Adams spoke of his own health problems to illustrate the problem that affects his community. “I said before, I have high blood pressure myself. I have heart disease and I have already spent a week in intensive care because of a heart problem. I have asthma and I am pre-diabetic. I illustrate what it's like to grow up poor and black in America ”.
In the midst of an epidemic, rigorous studies of a national dimension are still missing. But it turns out that poor and black neighborhoods have fewer doctors and poorer hospitals. That medical coverage for service jobs is lower than other better paying jobs. A phenomenon has also been documented, in which black patients are prescribed fewer examinations and consultations with specialists than whites.
"Many black Americans do not have the privilege of being able to confine themselves"
Georges Benjamin, president of the American Public Health Association (APHA), also explains to AFP that black people in the United States are more exposed to the coronavirus than better-off populations, in their daily life or their work. "This population faces more of the general public," he says. "They are more often bus drivers, they take more public transport, they work more in retirement homes, shops and supermarkets."
Social distancing is more complicated when you live in denser neighborhoods, smaller dwellings. As for teleworking, it is often impossible, due to the types of jobs. And having home deliveries is often a luxury. "Many black Americans and other communities of color do not have the privilege of being able to confine themselves at home," wrote hundreds of doctors and the minority advocacy organization Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. , in a letter to the United States Secretary of Health.
The situation of ethnic minorities affects everyone, insists Ebony Hilton, an anesthesiologist at the University of Virginia medical center, unlike other health problems. "These infected workers will go to the supermarket, and when the wealthiest classes in America go shopping, they will be infected," she told AFP.
Here and there, testimonies are multiplying on the less accessibility of screening sites in poor neighborhoods than wealthy neighborhoods. The above group called on federal health officials to "immediately publish ethnic and racial data" on the testing and prevalence of Covid-19, in order to determine where additional resources should be sent. The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) already collects this information, writes the group, but has only published statistics by age.
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