Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 6, 2020
Date Accepted: Jun 3, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jun 4, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Why African Americans Are a Potential Target for COVID-19 Infection in the United States (USA).
ABSTRACT
While WHO has officially announced that COVID-19 outbreak reaching a pandemic level, things have significantly changed inside USA, as this infection spread has reached its exponential phase. A stringent analysis of the COVID-19 epidemiologic data requires much more time and would generally be expected to happen after the exponential phase of the disease is over and when the focus of the health-care system is diverted away from crisis-management. Although much is said about high-risk groups and the vulnerability of elderly and patients with underlying comorbidities, the impact of race and its implications on susceptibility of ethnic minorities in indigent societies towards COVID-19 has not been discussed. There are currently some data on disparities between African American and Caucasians for COVID-19 infection and mortality. While the health-care authorities are reorganizing their resources and the infrastructure to provide care for the COVID-19 symptomatic patients, they should not shy away from protecting the general public as a whole and specifically the most vulnerable members of society, such as the elderly, ethnic minorities, and people with underlying comorbidities as well as African Americans.
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