After re-evaluating its death data related to race and ethnicity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that the coronavirus is taking a much heavier toll on people of color than previously understood.
This second look has determined that Latino and Black people in the United States are dying at much younger ages and at a rate of almost three times that of white people in the U.S.
The revision came after Sen, Elizabeth Warren called on the CDC to adjust its data by age.
“By failing to adjust COVID-19 mortality rates by age in its public data releases, the CDC may not be providing an accurate assessment of the increased risk of death and serious illness for communities of color relative to White Americans of the same age,” she wrote in a letter to CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield.
Update: @CDCgov got our request, and has adjusted its official COVID-19 race/ethnicity mortality rates for age. The data show that Black, Latino, and Native Americans are dying of COVID-19 at a much higher rate than white Americans than they previously indicated. https://t.co/LA8tvtOGu2 pic.twitter.com/cvTNWdPoJL
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 2, 2020
Baylor College of Medicine Vaccine Scientist Dr. Peter Hotez has followed COVID-19’s impact on the Latino population in Texas, which he said was a historic decimation of a community.
“This is robbing the Hispanic community of a generation of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters.”
Texas’ COVID-19 data reflects the nationwide trend. Latino people make up 39.7% of the state’s population, but represent 53% of statewide deaths related to the coronavirus.
This new data underscores a message about vaccines that Hotez has been adamant about sharing far and wide: At-risk populations need to be as close to the front of the vaccine line as possible.
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