Nearly 20% of Californians know someone who has died of COVID-19, a rate that’s significantly higher for people of color and low-income residents, according to a new poll from the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF).
Among respondents, 10% of White people reported knowing someone who had died of the virus, while that rate rose to 29% for Latinx people, 28% for African Americans and 19% for Asian Americans.
Meanwhile, 26% of low-income respondents of all races said they knew someone who had died.
Those discrepancies are not surprising to Andrea Polonijo, a postdoctoral fellow at the UC Riverside School of Medicine, where she studies health disparities.
“We know that Black and Latinx populations have disproportionately been diagnosed with the virus and disproportionately have died of the virus,” she said.
Black and Latinx residents make up the majority of California’s front-line workers, and many have had to continue doing their jobs through the pandemic, often without appropriate personal protective equipment, she said. Consistent with the rest of the country, California has seen a spate of outbreaks at essential workplaces across the state — from meatpacking plants and farms to construction sites — exposing scores of workers to the virus.
“Every day when they go to work, they're putting themselves at risk of getting the virus or potentially dying,” Polonijo said.
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