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Coronavirus Is Devastating Communities Of Color, Exposing Underlying Health Inequities

A bus driver for DDOT bus line in Detroit, Michigan, poses for a portrait while wearing her protective mask on March, 24, 2020. (Seth Herald/AFP/Getty Images)
A bus driver for DDOT bus line in Detroit, Michigan, poses for a portrait while wearing her protective mask on March, 24, 2020. (Seth Herald/AFP/Getty Images)

Across the country, black and brown communities are disproportionately contracting and dying from COVID-19. In Chicago, 70% of those who have died from COVID-19 are black.

It’s a racial pattern that’s repeating in Detroit, New Orleans, Milwaukee and in New York City, where the hardest-hit areas in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens are largely black and Latino neighborhoods.

Here & Now’s Tonya Mosley discusses what’s driving these racial inequities with Dr. Uché Blackstock (@uche_blackstock), an urgent care doctor in clinics in Brooklyn, New York, and founder of Advancing Health Equity.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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