Glaring Covid Inequities Persist Even as U.S. Pandemic Wanes

(Bloomberg) -- The Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S. is likely to end the way it began -- with Black and Latino residents suffering a disproportionate amount of the pain and suffering.

While conditions have improved for all Americans, Black people are still being hospitalized with Covid-19 at twice the rates of Whites, according to Covid-Net, a hospital surveillance network for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The disparities reflect the same long-running inequities in health care and wealth that have contributed to higher rates of diabetes and obesity. But they also underscore the urgency for the U.S. to improve its vaccination campaign in the Black community.

Black and Hispanic respondents in the KFF Covid-19 Vaccine Monitor survey report wanting the vaccines more than now-famously hesitant groups such as Republicans and White Evangelical Christians -- and yet they’ve received fewer by comparison.

The margin of sampling error for race and ethnicity data starts at 4 percentage points and can be higher for sub-groups.

One paper estimated that the excess death rate during the first 10 months of the pandemic -- the rate at which mortality exceeded normal times -- was about 33% higher for the Black population than the White one. The discrepancies are even more alarming when standardizing for age differences, since the Black population tends to be younger.

The U.S. posted 24,197 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the seven-day average to 23,389, the lowest since June 17. There have been at least 592,425 deaths overall.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.