U.S. CDC Looks at Race Disparities for COVID-19 Cases and Deaths

Aug. 20, 2020 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes a comparison of COVID in the U.S. for testing positive, being hospitalized, and dying—comparing Afro-Americans, Hispanic, Asian and Native American/Native Alaskan to the White population. While the Asian category tracks closely to the White, the other three all show 2.6-2.8 times higher cases, and 4.6-5.3 times higher hospitalizations. They are contracting COVID, and suffering from worse cases of COVID, out of proportion to their representation in the population. CDC does not have data tracked for income levels.

Interestingly, once in a hospital, the incidence of death tends to even out both for the Hispanic and American Indian populations, as they drop down to only around 1.1 -1.4 times higher than Whites. However, there is still a significant variance in deaths for Afro-Americans, who die at a rate 2.1 times higher than Whites. Otherwise, the CDC does list as the key factors crowding, enclosed spaces and duration of exposure—factors much more likely to accompany poverty.

Separately, CDC’s figures show that, while females contract COVID a little more than men, their respective rates of death are 2.84% for women and 3.57% for men—that is, men are about 1.26 times more likely, once COVID is contracted, to die.

Finally, the gentle tamping down of new COVID cases continues this week, as we had two days in a row below 40,000/day—something not seen since June 24-25. This is progress, but still some distance away from the sub-20,000 level thought to be the minimum necessary to make pre-emptive testing and tracking effective. Of note, from May 11 to June 15, the country hovered around 20,000/day. The July period had shot up to more than the 60,000 range.