Washington (AFP)

Thousands of demonstrators in close ranks, shouting their demands and sometimes coughing under the influence of tear gas: the current anger movement in the United States could rekindle the spread of the coronavirus, but many are ready to take the risk "for the good of the nation".

For Ebony Hilton, a black doctor at the University Hospital of Virginia, America is currently facing two dangerous pandemics: Covid-19 and police violence.

She is afraid of seeing the first leave again in the country, where "social distancing is not respected" among the demonstrators, who, when they do, "unfortunately often do not wear their masks in the right way".

The tear gas shots regularly used to disperse crowds, she told AFP, "also increase the risk" because of the cough and gagging they cause.

Most of the protesters are well aware of this danger in the country most bereaved in the world by the Covid-19 pandemic.

But they disregard it in the face of the greatness of the cause to defend after the disappearance of George Floyd, African-American of 46 years died asphyxiated last week in Minneapolis under the knee of a white police officer.

"What's happening right now is also for the good of the nation," said Cav Manning, a 52-year-old New Yorker who swelled the ranks of a Brooklyn motorcade on Monday evening.

"What we have seen is so disturbing that we have to be here on the street, despite the Covid, despite the risk of infection," he insists.

- Duplicate -

Behind the demonstrations against police brutality, racism and social inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic hide disturbing statistics.

Study conducted last year, based on press reports and official data, found that one black man had a one in 1,000 chance of ending up killed by police, 2.5 times more than a white man. .

"There is a lot of evidence that the police are a threat to public health in the United States," said the study's lead author Frank Edwards of Rutgers University.

The problem doesn't stop with high-profile deaths like that of George Floyd, but affects the daily health of a community that feels stigmatized, observes doctor Ebony Hilton.

"There is evidence that chronic stress is directly linked to an increased risk of cancer, hypertension, diabetes, heart problems, obesity," she said.

Even though the pandemic has slowed in the United States since the peak reached in mid-April, health professionals are worried with the manifestations of a resurgence in the coming weeks.

Especially since appear in processions of many African-Americans and representatives of other minorities particularly exposed to Covid-19 because of medical history.

Brandon Brown, epidemiologist at the University of California Riverside, recalls that the risk of outdoor contamination, although lower, is not completely reduced to zero.

Masks also have, in these times, the advantage of being duplicated by protecting "not only Covid-19, but also from the surveillance of the authorities".

© 2020 AFP