Is the pandemic hitting the African-American community harder in Virginia?
State health officials do not know the racial identity for most people in Virginia who have confirmed cases of coronavirus. That’s a concern for state officials who are seeing that the disease is actually not an equalizer, that it’s hitting African-American communities much harder in states that keep data on race.
Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran says this lack of information is because people who administer the tests of not always collecting demographics.
“It’s the provider who is actually administering the test is not capturing the racial identifier," Moran says. "And then when the test goes to the lab for results, it’s coming back and we don’t have the racial information.”
That’s why Governor Ralph Northam is calling on state officials to make a formal request to health providers to start collecting racial demographics on all COVID-19 patients.
“That obligates us to do a better job of tracking racial demographic data of confirmed cases," Northam said at a press conference Wednesday. "I have directed VDH, our Virginia Department of Health, to make sure that we are doing just that.”
States that track the racial identity of COVID-19 patients are seeing numbers that show black people are being infected and dying at higher rates. So far, Virginia does not have the numbers to show if that’s happening here or not.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
