Racial toll of virus grows even starker as more data emerges
Posted: April 18, 2020 - 4:55am

Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Eugene Rush, who was diagnosed with the new coronavirus near the end of March, and his son Joshua, pose outside their Superior Township, Mich., home Thursday, April 16, 2020. Rush and his 16-year-old son, who has since also been diagnosed with COVID-19, are both on the mend and resting at home. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

As a clearer picture emerges of COVID-19’s decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus, including inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity.

A growing chorus of medical professionals, activists and political figures are pressuring the federal government to not just release comprehensive racial demographic data of the country’s coronavirus victims, but also to outline clear strategies to blunt the devastation on African Americans and other communities of color.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its first breakdown of COVID-19 case data by race, showing that 30% of patients whose race was known were black. The federal data was missing racial information for 75% of all cases, however, and did not include any demographic breakdown of deaths.

The latest Associated Press analysis of available state and local data shows that nearly one-third of those who have died are African American, with black people representing about 14% of the population in the areas covered in the analysis.