COVID-19 'disproportionately' killing African Americans, Latinos: Analyst

Racial factors in the United States are "disproportionately" causing more African Americans and Latin Americans to die from the COVID-19 outbreak compared to other groups living in the country, says an African American journalist in Detroit.

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor at the Pan-African News Wire, told Press TV in an interview on Tuesday that Americans belonging to oppressed strata in US society, such as African-Americans and Latinos," have been suffering immensely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic."

The analyst said institutionalized racism in the United States is a main factor plunging these groups into dire conditions.

"Racism that is so much associated with the housing, job market, and healthcare system. All of these factors are combined to result in disproportionately to Latin Americans contracting and dying from COVID-19 as well as people losing their jobs and this, this, of course, is going to exacerbate the crisis even further," he warned.

Azikiwe emphasized that racial factors were playing a detrimental role in poor people's housing and health insurance in urban areas, spreading the disease ever faster among these groups.

"People who live in urban areas that are densely populated, where a significant portion of the population do not have health care insurance, and are living in conditions that are overcrowded. So this has served as an incubator for the spread of the COVID-19 virus," he noted.

Azikiwe pointed out that there were "people who have no health insurance, who have no primary care physician, and it's been very difficult for these people who have developed symptoms, first to get tested, then to be seen by a physician, and also to be hospitalized."

The American critic of government policies cited Detroit and Chicago as two examples of cities where the death toll of African-Americans, especially those who were healthcare workers and other frontline workers, had been high.

"For example, in a city like Chicago, 72% of the deaths as of last week, were among African Americans, even though they only constitute 30% of the population. In Detroit, while a huge percentage of the people who have died from COVID-19 were African Americans, there are healthcare workers - over 2000 - who tested positive for COVID-19. Three nurses have died. There's been death in the police department, as well as the public transportation sector," he said.

Azikiwe said all these factors were "compounded in creating this type of crisis."

He called on US political and governmental officials to address the issue of racism, resolving the threatening crises affecting the livelihood of the oppressed strata of US society.

"There has to be a long term strategy to address the healthcare crisis, the housing crisis, the economic crisis, and that's the only way we can guard against future pandemics of this nature, or perhaps even worse," Azikiwe concluded.

Several new polls show most Americans criticize US President Donald Trump’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Almost all Americans report being concerned about being infected by the novel coronavirus, according to the surveys.

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