US agency vows steps to address COVID-19 inequalities

NEW YORK (AP) — If Black, Hispanic and Native Americans are hospitalized and killed by the coronavirus at far higher rates than others, shouldn't the government count them as high risk for serious illness?

That seemingly simple question has been mulled by federal health officials for months. And so far the answer is no.

But federal public health officials have released a new strategy that vows to improve data collection and take steps to address stark inequalities in how the disease is affecting Americans.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stress that the disproportionately high impact on certain minority groups is not driven by genetics. Rather, it's social conditions that make people of color more likely to be exposed to the virus and — if they catch it — more likely to get seriously ill.

“To just name racial and ethnic groups without contextualizing what contributes to the risk has the potential to be stigmatizing and victimizing,” said the CDC's Leandris Liburd, who two months ago was named chief health equity officer in the agency's coronavirus response.

Outside experts agreed that there's a lot of potential downside to labeling certain racial and ethnic groups as high risk.

“You have to be very careful that you don’t do it in such a way that you’re defining a whole class of people as ‘COVID carriers.’” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

COVID-19's unequal impact has been striking:

— American Indians and Native Alaskans are hospitalized at rates more than five times that of white people. The hospitalization rate for Black and Hispanic Americans is more than four times higher than for whites, according to CDC data through mid-July.

— Detailed tracking through...