The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a report saying that the number of Hispanic people dying due to COVID19 is growing rapidly. Minorities in the United States have been majorly hit by the global pandemic. The number of death among them is still on the rise, said the experts. As per the data, Hispanic Americans have made up 16.3 percent of COVID19 deaths in the US in the month of May. In August, the proportion has gone up to 26.4 percent. Reports show that more than half of the US deaths due to the pandemic include white Americans; however, the number of black and Hispanic people who have lost their lives amid the pandemic is higher than their share of the population. The rise in deaths among Hispanic people might be due to the shift of the epidemic from the northeast to the south and west regions. South and west regions are highly populated with black and Hispanic people.
The CDC suggests that black and Hispanic people are highly prone to the virus and they are more likely to die due to the infection. As per the data fetched from Johns Hopkins University, 217000 people have lost their lives due to COVID19 so far. Around 8 million people have been infected with the virus. Although the pandemic has confirmed that it does not differentiate in infecting the people of all ages, races, and ethnicities, and genders, however, it does not hit all these groups equally either. Nearly 114411 people have died due to COVID19 between May and August. Reports say that 49 percent of them have been black and Hispanic people. Nearly 51.3 percent of them have been white people. Experts have said that the proportion of white people dying will be more than three quarters if the virus would have hit the people of all races equally. Black people make up only 13 percent of the US total population; however, they account for 19 percent of people who have died due to COVID19 in the US. Latinx and Hispanic people contribute to 18 percent of the population in the US, but they make up for more than 24 percent of deaths in the last four months.
The shift of COVID19 outbreak from northeast to south and west regions has been instrumental in increasing the death toll among minorities. With overwhelming cases in New York City and tri-state area under control, other regions of the country, which have fewer cases and do not require aggressive measures, have started to see a surge in deaths and further infection. South region has seen only 23 percent of COVID19 deaths in May; however, the share of deaths across the region has increased by threefold and reached up to 62 percent. The share of deaths in the west region as well has increased from 10.4 percent to 21.4 percent. As per the experts, the geographic shift of the outbreak might be due to the difference in the implementation of community mitigation efforts across the nation. The authors of the study have said that ethnic disparity among the descendants of south and west has increased in the months of May and August. It might be another reason for the rising deaths among black and Hispanic people.
