L.A. releases first racial breakdown of coronavirus fatalities; blacks have higher death rate

Los Angeles County for the first time released a partial racial breakdown of coronavirus fatalities, showing African Americans are somewhat more likely to die from COVID-19.

LA County public health director Barbara Ferrer said the county has racial information for 57% of the deaths reported so far but is “working hard to complete those records.”

Los Angeles County health officials on Tuesday confirmed 22 more coronavirus-linked deaths, bringing the county’s total to 169, as the number of people testing positive for the illness nears 7,000.

Of the 93 deaths from the coronavirus where there is racial information, here is a breakdown:

28% Latino

27% White

19% Asian

17% African American

9% other

“When we look at these numbers by the total population of each group, African Americans have a slightly higher rate of death than other races,” said L.A. County health director Barbara Ferrer.

Black people make up 9% of the population of L.A. County.

Meanwhile, Latinos comprise nearly half the county population but 28% of deaths.

The coronavirus death percentages for white and Asian residents more closely matched their share of the county population.

Here is the racial breakdown of coronavirus cases where there is information:

White 870

Hispanic/Latino 735

Other 693

Asian 316

African American 283

Under Investigation 3,711

Cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia report stark racial disparities in coronavirus patients and fatalities, but until today California counties have not provided racial breakdowns.

Recently, a Los Angeles Times analysis found that many of L.A. County’s whitest and wealthiest enclaves were reporting far higher rates of infection than poorer neighborhoods of color. However, public health officials said those disparities did not necessarily mean the virus was spreading more widely through richer neighborhoods than in poorer ones. Instead, the reporting was likely skewed by uneven access to testing and, in some instances, by wealthy residents who traveled internationally and had some of the earliest confirmed infections.

The finding, some experts said, could be bad news for local efforts to control the spread of COVID-19, as it suggests a disparity of testing along the lines of race, income and immigration status that could be obscuring potential hot spots in disadvantaged communities and giving residents there the false impression that they have less to fear from the virus.

County health officials last week acknowledged “geographic disparities” in coronavirus testing, but said they continue to have difficulties getting complete information on who has been tested. That’s in part because labs have only been reporting positive results, and not negative ones, making it impossible to determine whether the tests are being provided equally across the county.

On Monday, Ferrer acknowledged that the county was still working to understand who is being hit hardest by the outbreak.

“We have a lot of incomplete reporting, and it’s been a challenge,” she said. “So we need to go back now and do some medical record reviews so that we can actually get more accurate information.”

Ferrer said African Americans and Native Americans are among the groups in L.A. County that “have a disproportionate burden of illness going into a pandemic” and are “much more likely to have higher rates of almost every illness that we collect information on.”

“Having serious underlying health conditions makes you at much higher risk for serious illness, and even death, from COVID-19,” she said. “So we want to do everything we can to both understand the data, make sure that our communities have access to all the information that we have about any inequities, and then that we work together to try to minimize inequitable distributions of any disease, and certainly of death.”

Officials in other California counties signaled Monday that they are open to releasing demographic data on patients, saying it has been a matter of time and resources.

San Francisco’s director of health, Dr. Grant Colfax, said the city will provide a greater level of data about the spread of coronavirus “very soon,” including a data tracker that will provide demographic information, the number of hospitalizations and other details.

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