Racial Disparities Exposed by COVID-19

The COVID 19 pandemic has laid bare the evidence of long-standing racial inequities in health care in the United States. National statistics available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, “COVID 19 in Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups,” June 25, 2020, https://bit.ly/31r5lI6) and data collected at the state level (COVID Racial Data Tracker, https://covidtracking.com/race) consistently demonstrate that individuals of color are at greater risk of contracting, being hospitalized for, and dying from COVID-19 compared with their white counterparts, when accounting for each group’s share of the population.