Study says black counties are hit harder.

About 50% of cases,60% of deaths occur in disproportionately African American areas,virus study says

Black people make up a disproportionate share of the population in 22% of U.S. counties, and those localities account for more than half of coronavirus cases and nearly 60% of deaths, a national study by an AIDS research group found.

The study also found that socioeconomic factors such as employment status and access to health care were better predictors of infection and death rates than underlying health conditions.

Gregorio Millett, vice president of Amfar, the Foundation for Aids Research, said the findings suggest that black people will be more vulnerable to the pandemic as states begin to reopen businesses and public spaces.

“It’s clear that there’s a disproportionate impact of COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths among African Americans,”

Millett said, adding that the authors of the study released it early in the hope of influencing policy decisions about reopening businesses. “All of my colleagues fear that with these policies to open up communities, that the brunt of the COVID-19 epidemic is not going to be borne equally on all communities, that we will likely see greater COVID-19 deaths as well as cases in African American communities.”

Millett said researchers plan to track disproportionately black counties in four states — Georgia, Texas, Alabama and South Carolina — to see what effect loosening social distancing and sheltering requirements will have on COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Researchers at Amfar and the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Georgia led the study team, which included investigators from Johns Hopkins, the University of Mississippi, Georgetown University and the nonprofit PATH.

The study adds to a growing body of data that has shown that black people have been infected and killed at disproportionate rates by the novel coronavirus. It also raises concern, as have other studies and analyses, about gaps in data collected and reported by county, state and federal officials about the race and ethnicity of virus sufferers, including testing, cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

The Amfar study, based on data collected April 13, focused on counties in which black people made up more than 13% of the population. Disproportionately black counties account for 22% of all U.S. counties but have been home to 52% of coronavirus cases and 58% of deaths from COVID-19, the disease the virus causes.

Almost all disproportionately black counties have had at least one person diagnosed with the coronavirus, compared with 80% of other counties, and nearly half of counties with large black populations, 49%, have had at least one person die of COVID-19, the study found. The higher diagnoses were found in disproportionately black counties in urban, small metro and rural areas. Smaller metro areas and rural communities saw higher death rates.

Although public health experts and political leaders have attributed the high rate of serious illness and deaths from COVID-19 among black Americans to underlying health conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, the Amfar study found that those factors were not the primary cause of the disparities. Rather, other social determinants, including employment, access to health insurance and medical care and poor air and water quality, were more predictive of infection and death from COVID-19.