The coronavirus seems to disproportionately kill African Americans, according to the few states providing data on the race of victims
- The coronavirus pandemic has hit the African American community harder than the general US population, early data suggests.
- Michigan, Illinois, and North Carolina are the only states that have publicly broken down the data on coronavirus infections and deaths by race.
- Experts believe poverty and a lack of healthcare are hampering the fight against COVID-19 in the African American community.
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African Americans are dying from the novel coronavirus in disproportionate numbers, according to the limited data available on how the pandemic is affecting people of different races.
Only three states, Michigan, Illinois, and North Carolina, are providing data highlighting infection rates by race, but the figures indicate that African Americans are at a higher risk than white people of getting a case of COVID-19 so severe that it leads to death.
There are calls for more states to provide this kind of data so that a more reliable picture can be formed across the US.
Two experts have suggested that the virus is having a starker effect on African Americans because people in that demographic are more likely to live in poverty and to be in ill health, both of which can exacerbate COVID-19.
New data from Michigan shows that African Americans are 14% of the population (1.4 million) but represent 40% (247) of the coronavirus deaths in the state.
It is a similar story in Illinois, where 113 African Americans have died out of a recorded 274 deaths, representing 41% of the total figure.
The black community in the state numbers 1.8 million or 14.6% of the demographic.
Other anecdotal evidence from around the country - where testing data varies from state-to-state - affirms this apparent racial disparity in the coronavirus infection and death statistics.
ProPublica reported from Milwaukee: "As of Friday morning, African Americans made up almost half of Milwaukee County's 945 cases and 81% of its 27 deaths in a county whose population is 26% black." Within that figure, it is mainly men falling ill.
The trend was replicated in North Carolina.
In that state, 647 of total known cases - equivalent to 37% - were among African Americans, who make up 21% of the total population of 10.4 million.
The North Carolina death toll - which includes six African Americans of the 31 total deaths - was more in line with the population, making up 19% of deaths compared with 21% overall.
Dr. Lisa Cooper, a medical expert and social epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told US News & World Report that broader social disadvantage was the reason black people were worse-hit.
She noted that "as a group, African Americans in the US have higher rates of poverty, housing and food insecurity, unemployment or underemployment, and chronic medical conditions, and disabilities."
It is also possible that the Illinois and Michigan data is skewed by the fact that the largest coronavirus outbreaks in those states are in Chicago and Detroit respectively, which both have large African American populations.
Dr. Camara Jones, a family physician, epidemiologist, and visiting fellow at Harvard University, told ProPublica: "This is the time to name racism as the cause of all of those things. The overrepresentation of people of color in poverty and white people in wealth is not just a happenstance. … It's because we're not valued."
Meanwhile, a political campaign has been launched to pressure the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to start collating figures to monitor and address racial disparities in the US's response to the coronavirus disease.
Five members of Congress, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, signed a letter to Alex Azar, the US health secretary, on the topic.
"Although COVID-19 does not discriminate along racial or ethnic lines, existing racial disparities and inequities in health outcomes and health care access may mean that the nation's response to preventing and mitigating its harms will not be felt equally in every community," the letter said.
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