Data released Tuesday shows that Black Louisiana residents are dying of the novel coronavirus at higher rates than other races regardless of where they live in the state, according to NOLA.com. The new data contradicts an assumption that the majority Black communities of New Orleans had resulted in a skew within the earlier released data that pointed to a disparity. Thomas LaVeist, dean of Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, told NOLA.com that the new data points to a truth “we should all be ashamed of.”
"This is a statewide problem," he said. "It's not just the cities, it's not just the rural towns, it's not just the mid-sized cities, it's everywhere in the state."
Black Louisiana residents accounted for 57% of the 1,405 people who have died of the virus while only making up 33% of the state's residents, NOLA.com reported. More than 52 out of every 100,000 Black people had died of the virus as of Tuesday. The same rate for other races was 2.65 times lower, the news site reported.
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"This is everywhere, no one is spared this," LaVeist told NOLA.com. "And I will also say these death rates for non-blacks are unacceptably high, too. I think white Louisianians should be shocked by these numbers, this is not a matter of it being someone else's problem. This is everybody’s problem. The virus doesn’t care about race, it doesn’t care about politics, it will go anywhere it can."
Dr. Alex Billioux, head of the state Office of Public Health, told the news site that just as health disparities cross geographical bounds, so does poverty, with half the state living below the poverty line or just above it. "If you have that many people who are already poor or one or two paychecks away from being poor, you have a very fragile system," he said.
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New Orleans City Council Member Jay H. Banks said the coronavirus data points to a trend that is far from new. He told NOLA.com he knows 17 people who have died from the virus and only one of them wasn't Black. "What’s new is the illustration of it. What’s new is that people can see it that couldn’t see it before,” he said. “Now it's slapping people in the face and you still have people trying to ignore it."
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To work toward a solution to a decades-old disparity illuminated by the novel coronavirus pandemic, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards established a COVID-19 Health Equity Taskforce earlier this month. He appointed LaVeist and Sandra Brown, dean of Southern University's College of Nursing and Allied Health, to serve as chairpersons on the task force, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
"I look forward to working with a distinguished diverse group of experts from across the state that are committed to addressing the health disparities that specifically challenge minorities and vulnerable populations in Louisiana not only in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in advancing health equity for decades to come,” she said in the release.