As the pandemic breaks out in states like Arizona and Florida in the United States, people in communities of color who have been exposed to the virus are struggling to get tested. While people across the country complain that appointments are oversold or that they expect to see the hours, getting tested can be even more difficult in America’s poorest, Hispanic, and black neighborhoods, far from areas Middle class where most chain pharmacies and urgent care clinics offering testing are located.
“There really isn’t any evidence around here,” said Juan Espinosa, who went with his brother Enrique to the recent test drive event in the mostly Latino neighborhood of Maryvale in Phoenix after a construction partner was suspected of having COVID-19. . “We don’t know where to go,” he told the AP.
A Latino cook whose coworker got COVID-19 waited in his truck for a free swab at a rare test event in a low-income neighborhood in Phoenix. A Hispanic tile installer stood in line after two weeks of self-isolation while his father battled the coronavirus in intensive care. He did not know that his father would die days later.
Arizona is now the leading state for new confirmed infections per capita in the past two weeks, and its minority neighborhoods are just beginning to feel what New York and other East Coast and Midwest communities experienced several months ago, said Mahasin Mujahid, associate professor at the University. from California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health.
“It is the perfect storm as this hits uneven playing fields across the United States,” said Mujahid, a social epidemiologist who studies health in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Public health officials say widespread testing to quickly identify and isolate infected people can help ensure that residents of underserved neighborhoods receive care while slowing the spread of the virus.
“Pandemics expose inequalities in our health care system,” said Dr. Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor at TH Harvard TH School of Public Health and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “What is needed is to make the tests free and as widely available as possible.
“Reaching the Hispanic population, the black community, immigrants, the most vulnerable and unprotected people is essential for public health”
But President Donald Trump’s administration has delegated the responsibility for testing to states that have put together a set of responses, forcing private foundations and nonprofit community health organizations to fill in the gaps and ensure that they are reached. people of color.
“If you only set up test sites in wealthy communities, you can’t control this,” said Dr. Usama Bilal, an assistant professor at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health in Philadelphia, where black doctors recently won city funding for tests. in African American neighborhoods.
When Florida officials were slow to implement the tests in the immokalee migrant community, the Immokalee Workers Coalition, a nonprofit organization, asked for help from the international aid group Doctors Without Borders.
The Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation in Chicago lobbied long before enlisting the support of the city’s Racial Equity Rapid Response Team to deliver free and widespread testing in that Black neighborhood.
“It hit African American communities very, very hard,” said the corporation’s executive director, Carlos Nelson. “Since then, we have had great success in getting people evaluated and reducing numbers. «
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In Arizona, the free entrance test conducted on June 27 attracted nearly 1,000 people and was just the second major event of its kind in the Latin American neighborhood of Maryvale.
The first event, held on June 20 by the privately funded Equality Health Foundation, drew criticism when much larger than expected crowds showed up, and some people waited up to 13 hours. The organizers had decided to host those without appointments.
“It shows that evidence is not available if there is such a demand,” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association and former head of the state Department of Health Services.
Equality Health spokesman Tomás León acknowledged that “we were really overwhelmed” when many showed up for the first round. The results of that event, although incomplete, showed that about 24% of the tests were positive, he said. Arizona’s statewide positive rate had risen to 25.9% as of Sunday last week, which is the highest in the nation, according to the COVID Monitoring Project.
Since then, Arizona officials have pledged to increase testing sites, especially in Maryvale and other areas of western and southern Phoenix that are more than 80% Latino. Test sites are also scarce in a part of the city where some neighborhoods have more than 15% blacks.
“We need more evidence, and we need more efficiency around testing,” said Arizona Governor Doug Ducey in late June. “No one should have to wait hours and hours for tests to be done.”
Carlos Sandoval, 45, said his entire family needed a test after exposure to his 65-year-old father, who received COVID-19 and was susceptible due to a kidney transplant six years ago. His mother tested positive but had no symptoms.
While Sandoval was waiting to be examined late last month, his father was receiving oxygen at the hospital. His father, also called Carlos, died on June 30.
The family never imagined that COVID-19 would touch them, he said.
“We Hispanics don’t think the virus is very important until someone we know gets it,” Sandoval said.
Fatalities on the rise
The United States on Monday surpassed the figure of 130,000 deaths from the new coronavirus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, a local center of reference in this matter, according to the AFP report.
As of noon Monday (Washington time), 2,888,729 cases of covid-19 had been recorded, with 130,007 deaths. The daily number of registered infections reached a record of 57,683 cases on Saturday.
The United States is the most affected country, in absolute values, by number of diagnosed cases and deaths. Since June, it has registered a serious spike in infections that has led several states in the country to suspend their deconfiguration process, or even to return to the mandatory closure of public spaces.
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