Covid-19 Is Pummeling Black Americans, and Parents Are Not Alright: 5 Important New Findings
A roundup of the coronavirus research we’re following
Published in
2 min readMay 22, 2020
- Black people get it worse: In April, I reported in Elemental that the coronavirus was disproportionately killing Black people in the United States. Less than two months later, the toll of Covid-19 on Black Americans is much worse. In New York City, previously the epicenter of the nation’s pandemic, Black people are five times as likely to develop Covid-19, according to a preprint published in early May in medRxiv. Researchers found that areas of the city with large Black populations were at “markedly higher risk” of contracting the disease — for reasons not completely explained by the environment or preexisting conditions. A different set of data showed that the death rate for Black people with Covid-19 in New York City is three times that of White residents. Research released on Wednesday by APM Research Lab, a nonpartisan research group, also looked at data from Washington, D.C., and 40 states, finding that the death rate for Black people nationwide is 2.4 times that for White people and 2.2 times that for Latinx and Asian people. In some states, Black people are dying from the virus at up to seven times the rate of White people.
- Critically ill: A look at 257 people who tested positive for Covid-19 then became critically ill and were hospitalized, published in The Lancet on Tuesday, is the largest prospective study of adult U.S. coronavirus…
