Severe COVID impact on African Americans targeted
‘Testing must be increased among the disproportionately affected populations,’ says Dr. Ezike
Gov. Pritzker gives his daily coronavirus briefing Friday, backed by Dr. Suzet McKinney, head of the Illinois Medical District and the state’s alternate care facilities, and Dr. Ngozi Ezike, head of the Illinois Department of Public Health. (Illinois video screenshot)
By Ted Cox
The governor and the state public health director said Friday they’re taking steps to address the severe impact COVID-19 is having on African Americans.
“Testing must be increased among the disproportionately affected populations,” said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Department of Public Health, at the daily briefing at the Thompson Center in Chicago.
As the U.S. surgeon general was drawing attention to the same phenomenon nationally, Ezike laid out what she called “alarmingly high rates of COVID-19 in the black population.”
The state registered 1,465 new COVID-19 cases Friday and 68 deaths attributed to the disease, as total cases statewide climbed to 17,887 and the death toll reached 596. But Ezike immediately added the situation is especially dire among African Americans, who statewide are five times more likely than whites to die from the coronavirus. She said the disparity was especially awful among the older populations more susceptible to severe cases of COVID-19. African Americans in their 50s were found to be 12 times more likely than whites to die from the disease, those in their 60s were eight times more likely to die, and those in their 70s were 10 times more likely to succumb to COVID-19.
Gov. Pritzker called the “vastly disproportionate” effect the coronavirus is having on African Americans “a uniquely American problem,” adding, “Generations of systemic disadvantages in health-care delivery and in health-care access in communities of color, and black communities in particular, are now amplified in this crisis.”
“These subjects today about disparities in health care are not new to us, but often they get pushed to the side,” said Dr. Horace Smith, of Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. “These are issues that have been in these communities for a long time, and oftentimes, because of the ability in us to ignore what’s happening, it takes something catastrophic for us to really pay attention.
“These are endemic, longstanding issues,” he added. “As a pastor, and as a leader in the health-care community, I’m appalled to see such death."
As a result, Pritzker announced that Lurie would be joining with four federally qualified health centers on Chicago’s South and West sides to gather and process 400 COVID-19 tests a day. In the Metro East area, including East St. Louis, 470 tests a day will be sent for processing to Anderson Hospital in Madison County. And a drive-through testing site will launch next week in Chicago’s south suburbs of Harvey and Markham.
“Testing is crucial,” the governor said. “We need more ubiquitous testing.
“We’re making sure that our plans reflect equity in access, in testing, and in treatment,” he added. Pritzker said he expected hospitals across the state to do the same. “This is a crisis, and providers may have to operate beyond their normal capacity and allocate limited health-care resources. No one life is any more important than another.”
“Health disparities and inequalities are major concerns to me as the public health director,” Ezike said. “Black life expectancy continues to be years shorter than (for) the population as a whole.”
Ezike pointed out African Americans are more at risk for obesity and accompanying chronic diseases like diabetes, as well as high blood pressure — all of which increase risk for COVID-19. They’re also likely to work in jobs more detrimental to their health, and with insufficient health insurance. They’re also more likely to live in extended family homes, which can ease transmission of any health outbreak.
So the state is also targeting various cities across the state with a total of 2,000 hotel rooms intended to quarantine people who have tested positive for the virus but do not require hospitalization, so they can be quarantined away from family and roommates.
“We will not stand idly by while one segment of the population bears an unfortunate heightened burden of this disease,” Ezike said. “Testing must be increased among the disproportionately affected populations.
“We must address the dramatic disparity we’re seeing,” she added. “We’ve got to tackle it head on, and we hope that these steps will start to do just that. I want to reassure the people of Illinois we are working for the health and safety of all people of Illinois. We won’t hide from the hard truths, but rather elevate the truth and then address it.”
Smith applauded the testing, saying, “What’s being done today is a step forward,” but he also urged, “Let’s make sure we also attack the long-term institutional problems that have always been a part of our community.”
“What’s being done today is a step forward. Let’s make sure we also attack the long-term institutional problems that have always been a part of our community.”
Dr. Horace Smith (Illinois video screenshot)
One Illinois published a piece on those long-term issues earlier Friday.
Pritzker and Ezike said they are also monitoring the spread of the disease in rural areas and increasing testing there as well.
Pritzker and Ezike did express continued optimism that the upward curve of infections and deaths appeared to be leveling off. “We’re making progress, so that’s good news,” Pritzker said. “But I don’t want to project what next week or the week after will exactly look like, because I don’t exactly know when we’re going to peak, or how fast the downslide will be if we do come down off that peak, or if peaking means that we’re simply flattening the curve and … staying at the peak for some time and then falling. We just don’t know yet.”
For those reasons, he said he wasn’t yet ruling out students returning to end the school year, and the stay-at-home order is still set to expire at the end of the month. But he again cautioned that restrictions could extend into the summer.
“This is about the science and medicine. We need to listen to that,” Pritzker said. “There’s also the threat of a peak in the fall, because we don’t have a vaccine yet, and there isn’t a treatment yet. We don’t want to have a second wave.”
Pritzker, Ezike, and Smith all urged churchgoers to celebrate Easter and any services at home on Sunday. “I would like people to stay at home. That’s the safest thing they can do,” Pritzker said. “Staying home is saving a life — not just your own, but somebody else’s.”
It bears repeating that Ezike urged Illinoisans on Thursday to check on their neighbors — preferably by phone — and that no one, not even those showing symptoms, should quarantine themselves to the point of dying at home, which has been the case in New York City as it struggles to keep pace with coronavirus cases. Ezike said to call 911 in any emergency, especially in dealing with COVID-19.
Pritzker said the state is currently well-equipped with personal protective equipment required by doctors, nurses, police, and firefighters, but he again called on President Trump to make use of the Defense Production Act to streamline and organize the national response to the crisis. He blamed that in part for hospitals sometimes “poaching” medical personnel from other hospitals and other states, although he emphasized, “We want to make sure everybody is fulled staffed” at Illinois hospitals. Asked if he was satisfied with the federal response, Pritzker said, “I won’t be satisfied until we’re past the pandemic.”