Is Coronavirus Spreading Faster in African American Communities?

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During his Monday press briefing, Gov. John Bel Edwards said nearly 70 percent of the deaths related COVID-19 in Louisiana are African American. Hypertension remains the most common underlying condition in patients.

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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. Milwaukee is one of the few places in the United States that is tracking the racial breakdown of people who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, offering a glimpse at the disproportionate destruction it is inflicting on black communities nationwide.

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For the coronavirus pandemic, the CDC has released location and age data, but it has been silent on race. The CDC did not respond to ProPublica’s request for race data related to the coronavirus or answer questions about whether they were collecting it at all.

Experts say that the nation’s unwillingness to publicly track the virus by race could obscure a crucial underlying reality: It’s quite likely that a disproportionate number of those who die of coronavirus will be black.

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The only two U.S. areas in worse shape than New York City and southwest Georgia are in southeast Louisiana. Orleans Parish, known for the city of New Orleans, is 60.2 percent black. Its staggering infection rate of 892.1 per 100,000 people on Saturday was higher than the infection rates of New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami combined. At 38 deaths per 100,000 people, Orleans Parish’s death rate is higher than Albany’s. Thirty miles west of New Orleans is St. John the Baptist Parish, where the black population is 57.8 percent. If we exclude counties with only a single death, St. John the Baptist Parish has the second-highest COVID-19 death rate in the nation: an unutterable 39.1 deaths per 100,000 people.

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In Michigan, black Americans comprise 14.1 percent of the state population, but an ungodly 40 percent of coronavirus deaths. In Washtenaw County, home to Ann Arbor, 48 percent of residents hospitalized with the coronavirus are black, though black people make up only 11 percent of the county. In Illinois, the infection rate among black Americans is twice their percentage of the state population. In North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, black people comprise 32.9 percent of the residents, but 43.9 of the confirmed coronavirus cases, as of March 30. In Milwaukee, black Americans make up 26 percent of the county, but nearly half of the infections and a maddening 81 percent of deaths as of Friday.

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As public health officials watched cases rise in March, too many in the community shrugged off warnings. Rumors and conspiracy theories proliferated on social media, pushing the bogus idea that black people are somehow immune to the disease.

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Then, when the shelter-in-place order came, there was a natural pushback among those who recalled other painful government restrictions — including segregation and mass incarceration — on where black people could walk and gather.

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The county’s online dashboard of coronavirus cases keeps up-to-date information on the racial breakdown of those who have tested positive. As of Thursday morning, 19 people had died of illness related to COVID-19 in Milwaukee County. All but four were black, according to the county medical examiner’s office.

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