Chicago covid12/21/2023 ![]() ![]() Blacks account for 38 percent of the confirmed cases in Illinois but they are only 14% of the population. The number of black residents with COVID-19 statewide is also disproportionately high. Murray is particularly worried about the black population that’s incarcerated during this pandemic. In fact, there’s an incentive to want to go outside.” And so it’s really difficult to stay inside and do this thing. Jimenez said that many “people that we serve in the neighborhoods that we target, they can have multiple people living in a household. Read more: All of WBEZ’s coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak in Chicago and the region. “You just have a lot of people living in a house,” said Antonio Davis Jimenez, director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Community Outreach Intervention Projects. In poorer communities in the city, persons of color are also more likely to live in crowded homes, experts say. It can be more difficult for black residents to practice social distancing because the population is more likely to use public transit and hold jobs that can’t be done from home. Frieson, a retired nurse, died on March 16 and a week later her sister Wanda Bailey, 63, died of COVID-19. That was the case for 61-year-old Patricia Frieson, a black woman who was the first person to die in Illinois from the coronavirus. Some of these historical factors are raising the risks for black residents in the coronavirus outbreak, said Murray, a former official in the Chicago Department of Health and previous chief medical officer for Cook County Public Health. In Illinois, the rate of high blood pressure for black residents is around 48%. These conditions contribute to high rates of hypertension and diabetes. ![]() Historically, Chicago’s black communities have been disproportionately affected by health-related issues including poverty, environmental pollution, segregation and limited access to medical care. “So if you know those disparities exist in terms of health outcomes, you can imagine that overlaying a new disease is only going to exacerbate whatever inequities already exist.” “As we put on our health equity lens, we already know before COVID was ever established that the health outcomes for various communities are already different,” she said. Ezike said she “would not be entirely surprised” if a disproportionate number of deaths were occuring in black communities. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said Saturday. It’s still early in the pandemic and health officials are assessing information on which groups of people are being affected, Dr.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |