(NEW YORK) Friday morning, on the platform of the 170 metro statione Street in the Bronx. Laura Espegel nervously awaits the arrival of the train that will take her to work in a Manhattan pharmacy.
Posted on April 4, 2020 at 7:00 a.m.
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“I’m scared,” the 30-year-old New Yorker confides through a mask, holding a coffee and a cell phone in her latex-gloved hands. “I have three children at home. I don’t want to bring the virus back to them. “
The train is running late, as is often the case these days on the New York subway, where service has been cut by at least 25% since mid-March. When it arrives, Laura Espegel will have to decide whether or not to enter.
“If there are too many people in the cars, I’ll wait for the next train. I don’t mind being late, ”she said.
Her vigilance does not leave her at work.
“When I arrive at the pharmacy, I change my mask and my gloves, so as not to contaminate customers. And I keep disinfecting everything. If I could, I would stay home. But my husband lost his job in a warehouse. We need my pay more than ever. “
Laura Espegel lives in University Heights, one of the neighborhoods that is gaining attention in New York these days, for two specific reasons. The first stems from the fact that subway use remains very high there, according to data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), despite the coronavirus pandemic, of which New York is the epicenter, with 57,159 cases of contamination and 2,935 deaths confirmed on Friday afternoon.
PHOTO RICHARD HÉTU, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Laura Espegel, in the New York subway
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The other is the number of confirmed cases of contamination in the neighborhood, which is among the highest in New York, according to official data from the city’s Department of Public Health.
Disproportionate impact
“I don’t know if the use of the metro as such is linked to the high number of cases of contamination, or if it is the fact that people need to take the metro to get to somewhere where they have more contact. direct and extended with people. It’s hard to say, ”said to Press Denis Nash, professor of epidemiology at the University of the City of New York.
But one thing is certain, according to the expert: the pandemic is disproportionately hitting New Yorkers who live in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, mostly from Hispanic, African-American or immigrant women. According to city data, some of these neighborhoods had as many as 1,124 cases of contamination on Thursday, while affluent neighborhoods like Park Slope, in Brooklyn, or SoHo, in Manhattan, had fewer than 200.
Another certainty: the physical distancing measures in force in New York, as in many other cities in the world, tend to favor the richest to the detriment of the poorest.
“Interventions or strategies like home confinement or physical distancing end up introducing new disparities, even though we think it is the most beneficial thing for the population,” says Dr.r Nash. “Inevitably, the people who are the most educated or the most privileged benefit more from these things. They can protect their health and that of others by working from home, while the less educated or less privileged lose their jobs or have to risk their health and that of those close to them while commuting to work or to their place of work. “
These inequalities are manifesting themselves in rapid and startling ways, but they are also slowing down on an even greater scale everywhere else in society due to inequalities in wealth and flaws in our health care system, among others.
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Denis Nash, professor of epidemiology at the University of the City of New York
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“I don’t touch anything”
In New York, the new inequalities caused by the coronavirus have already produced indelible images. Thursday evening, for example, a local television channel relayed on its Instagram account a photo showing a New York subway car where colored users were piled up like sardines at 6 p.m.
The MTA explained that it was running as many trains as a staff reduced by the coronavirus allowed, which infected some of its members and forced others to go into quarantine. As it stands, its wagons remain a vector of contamination.
“I have no data indicating that the subway was a primary source of transmission in New York or other cities, and other studies have found home to be a significant source of transmission,” writes Michael Donnelly, data analyst, in a message to Press. “However, all research shows that the risk of transmission increases in crowded subways. “
PHOTO RICHARD HÉTU, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Gary Owusu, in the New York subway
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Gary Owusu is one of the residents of University Heights, in the Bronx, who has to deal with this reality. Every day, he takes the subway to his work in a hotel in the Chelsea district that has not yet closed.
“I’m careful. I do not touch anything or anyone in the metro, ”says the maintenance agent, originally from Ghana and 20 years old, while waiting on the platform of the 167 station.e Street in the Bronx. “But the trains fill up as we approach Manhattan. It is sometimes scary. We are all crowded together. “
Earlier this week, Gary Owusu rescued a neighbor in his 60s who complained of fever and fatigue, two symptoms of COVID-19. “We called the ambulance and he was taken to hospital. He is doing well under the circumstances, ”he says.
Is he afraid of having been contaminated by contact with his neighbor?
“I entered his house, but I did not touch anything,” he replies in a tone that wants to be convincing.
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