TAMPA, Fla. — The data from the Centers for Disease Control is clear: Nationwide, African Americans suffer disproportionately from the coronavirus.
The reasons vary and include everything from lack of adequate health care to higher rates of other illnesses such as diabetes, obesity, asthma and other respiratory conditions.
Cities like Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, New York and St. Louis, where there are large African American populations, have seen glaring disparities. However, numbers for the Tampa Bay region have, for the most part, remained in proportion with the overall local African American population.
Why?
Public health experts say the reason has a lot to do with history. Northern and Midwestern cities that have seen the higher coronavirus numbers in the African American community are more segregated by race, which can lead to inequality in housing, education, jobs and medical care, and can have detrimental effects on health.
“Although there’s segregation in the South, a lot of people don’t know that the North, especially the Northeast and the Midwest are the most segregated areas in the country,” said Dr. Darrell Hudson, associate professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Many African Americans moved north as part of what’s called the Great Migration in the early to mid-1900s for better job opportunities believing there would be less discrimination than in the South. However, discriminatory policies in housing and the job market were strong. African Americans were often confined to living in certain areas of the city in inadequate housing stock. Restrictive covenants also prevented African Americans from owning homes in white neighborhoods. Over time, the lack of jobs and poor quality housing created large pockets of poverty and crime.
RELATED: New COVID-19 testing site in East Tampa aims to increase access for African American neighborhoods
“In addition to the sort of hyper-segregation in the North compared to places in the Southeast, you also get concentrated poverty,” he said. “So, there’s high amounts of crime, people caring about their safety…employment opportunities are not there in a lot of communities, and so, it’s stressful, and stress gets under the skin. Stress is deleterious to the health. It’s corrosive. It’s related to a wider variety of diseases in general.”
St. Louis is one of those segregated cities with extreme concentrations of segregation, crime and poverty. The city is comparable in size to Tampa and operates as its own county. There, the African American population is about 45 percent. However, city statistics show that as of May 5, African Americans made up 66 percent of COVID-19 cases and 66 percent of COVID-19 deaths.
In contrast Hillsborough County is 18 percent African American. The Florida Department of Health does not break down cases by city, but Hillsborough County’s COVID-19 cases are mostly in proportion with the population. Data shows African Americans make up 18 percent of cases and 18 percent of COVID deaths. Hospitalizations are slightly higher at 28 percent.
“In more heavily-populated counties of African Americans [in Florida], we see more African American cases, but they’re not really in disproportion to the number of cases that you would expect for the community,” said Dr. Haywood Brown, vice president for diversity, inclusion & equal opportunity at USF Health.
Dr. Kevin Sneed, of the Taneja College of Pharmacy at the University of South Florida, said Tampa Bay’s African American community is not as densely populated as other northern and Midwestern cities experiencing disproportionate cases and deaths in the African American community.
“When you take a look at an area like St. Louis or New Orleans, New York City, you do find a lot more population density, and also you find a lot more public transit, mass transit,” said Sneed. “What I believe is the fact that many people of color, whether it be African American or Latino or otherwise have had to depend on mass transit if they were called to be an essential worker, and that really created an opportunity for the virus to spread much more readily.”
Another factor that may have helped Tampa Bay: the population is also more spread out physically.. “[Other cities have more high rise living], living with more people in apartment style areas, much more than we have here in the Tampa Bay area,” said Sneed. “…We’re a little more spread out here in Tampa Bay. We don’t have nearly as much mass transit and so, we really have had a full constellation of things that really allowed the Tampa Bay area to not be as affected as some other areas.”
However, like other places, health disparities among African Americans are still prevalent throughout the Tampa Bay community. African Americans tend to suffer from higher rates of diabetes and other respiratory conditions that can make COVID-19 more deadly once contracted.
In late April, Hillsborough County opened a new coronavirus testing site at the Lee Davis Community Center in East Tampa to increase access in areas with large African American populations.
"I don't think there was an appreciation of the vulnerability of these communities until really the last week or two, Dr. Charles Lockwood of USF said the week the site first opened. “We've known about these problems for a long time, and it's time to do something about it."
Sneed said the initial response focused on symptomatic patients, but now that testing has expanded, there is an opportunity to get better answers about coronavirus’ impact on the African American community.
“Now, we’re really beginning to realize the much more deleterious effect it can have on people of color that may have other morbid conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure,” he said. “So, it’s really important that we now get into an area of testing in these communities much more than we’ve done up until now.”
Brown said it’s possible that increased testing could change the data for African Americans in Hillsborough County. “I do believe that we’ll get more data now that we’re testing asymptomatic people throughout the city, throughout the state. That will better tell us about African Americans, because they are indeed coming in to be tested and to be screened. People want to know, and the fact that they want to know will give us significant information on the racial demographics of this particular pandemic.”
The Florida Department of Health does a daily breakdown of COVID-19 cases by county and race.
Here is the county-by-county breakdown for the Tampa Bay region as of May 6.
Citrus
African American population: 2.8 percent
COVID cases: 1 percent
Hospitalizations: 0
Deaths: 0
Hardee
African American population: 7.9 percent
COVID cases: 56 percent
Hospitalizations: 67 percent
Deaths: 0
Hillsborough County
African American population: 18 percent
COVID cases: 18 percent
Hospitalizations: 26 percent
Deaths: 18 percent
Manatee
African American population: 8 percent
COVID cases: 16 percent
Hospitalizations: 16 percent
Deaths: 16 percent
Pasco
African American population: 5.2 percent
COVID cases: 12 percent
Hospitalizations: 17 percent
Deaths: 0
Pinellas
African American population is 9.9 percent
COVID cases: 14 percent
Hospitalizations: 15 percent
Deaths: 6 percent
Polk County
African American population 14.8 percent
COVID cases: 22 percent
Hospitalizations: 25 percent
Deaths: 27 percent
Sarasota
African American population: 4.2 percent
COVID cases: 6 percent
Hospitalizations: 7 percent
Deaths: 4 percent
Emerald Morrow is a reporter with 10News WTSP. Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You can also email her at emorrow@wtsp.com.
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