Coronavirus mortality rates are nearly 15 times higher in some neighborhoods in New York City than in other neighborhoods. Residents of poor neighborhoods in particular are disproportionately affected, according to data released by the city’s health service.
The data shows, for the first time, a breakdown of the number of deaths in each of the city’s more than 60 zip codes. The highest death rate was recorded on the outskirts of Brooklyn in a neighborhood dominated by much public housing, called Starrett City.
In the wealthy white enclave of Gramercy Park in Manhattan, the number of deaths per 100,000 residents is 31. In Far Rockaway, Queens, with over 40 percent Black Americans and 25 percent Latino or Hispanic ancestry , the mortality rate is nearly 15 times higher. For every 100,000 inhabitants, 444 died.
“It’s really heartbreaking and it should erode the moral conscience of the city,” Mark Levine, chair of the city council’s health committee, said in an interview. “We knew we had dramatic inequality. This, in graphic form, shows that it is even greater than perhaps many of us feared.”
Poor black and Latino New Yorkers are much more likely to do low-paid, essential tasks that can’t be done remotely, putting them at greater risk for exposure, Levine said. They are also more likely than wealthy white New Yorkers to live in small, crowded apartments.
In New York, more than 20,000 people have died from the corona virus so far.
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