COVID and Race
One of the defining characteristics of the pandemic’s early stages was its disproportionate toll on Black and Latino Americans. During COVID’s early months in the U.S., the per capita death rate for Black Americans was almost twice as high as the white rate and more than twice as high as the Asian r…
But these large racial gaps in vaccination have not continued — and as a result, neither have the gaps in COVID death rates.
Instead, COVID’s racial gaps have narrowed and, more recently, even flipped. Over the past year, the COVID death rate for white Americans has been 14% higher than the rate for Black Americans and 72% higher than the Latino rate, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It is a remarkable turnabout, a story of both public health success and failure.