Study shows COVID-19 despair among Latinx.
Essential workers who are infected facing a tough choice
A study of coronavirus testing in San Francisco’s Mission District not only is reinforcing how the deadly disease is disproportionately affecting the Latino community but also is shedding new light on the impossible decisions the pandemic is forcing families to make.
Like whether to go to work ill, often at front-line jobs that offer no sick pay, and risk infecting their co-workers, or whether to thrust their loved ones into financial upheaval by staying home.
“It’s deeply personal, it’s deeply painful and it’s deeply frustrating to see from April to now, we have not been able to get a grip or a handle on something like COVID-19,” Jon Jacobo, a member of the Latino Task Force for COVID-19, said Wednesday during a Zoom call to discuss the study.
In August, UCSF and community groups like Calle 24 tested more than 2,500 people for the coronavirus at a free, walk-up testing site at the 24th Street Mission BART Station with the aim not only to understand how the virus was spreading but the problems in containing it.
Testers spoke English and Spanish and did not ask for any kind of identification or health insurance information. Earlier, in April, researchers had done similar testing in a single Mission District census tract, which revealed that 95% of those who tested positive were Latinos, although Latinos made up just 44% of those tested.
The results from the latest study in August were stark: 93% of all people who tested positive were Latinos and 85% spoke primarily Spanish. Though 9% of tests came back positive — compared with roughly 1% at a testing site in the wealthier Embarcadero area — that figure jumped to 11.3% among Latinos. The vast majority were low-income and the average number of people living in a household was six. Just 22% had formal sick leave. Although most lived in San Francisco, people from across the Bay Area were tested.
In an ideal world, said Diane Havlir, an infectious disease expert at UCSF who presented the results, the time from when someone is exposed to the disease to when he is tested is very short to limit the chances of someone unwittingly passing it to others before he shows symptoms. The time it takes to get test results also should be short so that people who need to isolate can quarantine themselves quickly.
“This is how we can reduce
transmission,” Havlir said.
In reality, that’s not always happening.
People tested at the Mission District site had to wait about four days for results, which is still much faster than at many other testing sites across the Bay Area.
And some people were getting tested well after exposure.
“People didn’t know how to get tested,” she said. “We need more access to lowbarrier testing.”
Unlike many other testing sites, the Mission location linked people who tested positive to community organizations that could deliver food and cleaning supplies. They were also able to sign up for a program in which San Francisco essentially will pay low-income workers to stay home when they are sick instead of going to work at jobs that require them to be out in the community.
But Jacobo and other advocates said it’s not enough, and the program is being hindered by bureaucracy. Of the people linked to the program through the study, none has received funds and likely won’t until later this month.
“There are unmet needs for the affected communities,” Havlir said.
The lag time is forcing families into impossible choices: Stay home and risk everything from your job to living situation or go to work sick and risk infecting others — all as the virus spreads quickly.
“It shouldn’t be taking a month, nearly, for folks who are living on the margins to receive something they need immediately,” Jacobo said. “Not if we want them to shelter in place.”
In the future, Havlir said, her team wants to use the standard coronavirus test, known as a PCR test, which is what they used for this study, alongside the rapid tests that are now coming on the market and promise fast — think minutes instead of days — results to study any difference in accuracy and whether a shift to rapid testing would be adequate.
“This virus is so fast,” she said, “and we have to keep up with the virus.”