6/14/2023 0 Comments Private contact tracers![]() ![]() As of late April, the Navajo nation had the third highest rate of Covid-19 per capita in the United States, after New Jersey and New York. ![]() As of June 12, Native Americans and Black Americans were hospitalized at a rate five times that of white persons, and Latino Americans were hospitalized at a rate four times that of white Americans. People of color are also much more likely to require hospitalization due to Covid-19 than white people. Black and Latino Americans are three times as likely to become infected with Covid-19 as white Americans and nearly twice as likely to die from the virus. Building trust will need to be a priority, as communities of color-particularly Black, Latino, and Native American communities-are disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 epidemic. The Tuskegee Study denied Black men treatment for syphilis over the 40-year experiment, until 1972. Eugenics programs led to as many as 70,000 forced sterilizations of Black and Latino Americans throughout the twentieth century. Many communities of color have faced a long history of discrimination, mistreatment, and exploitation by public health officials. ![]() The many contact tracing efforts conducted domestically and abroad over the last few decades have shown that trust is vital for these efforts to be successful. In the case of Covid-19, those steps include getting tested and, as appropriate, entering quarantine.Ĭontact tracing is one of the best tools the world currently has to combat the coronavirus pandemic, yet in communities of color this practice faces complex challenges. They also provide information and support on the steps those exposed should take. Contact tracers work with individuals who have tested positive for an infectious disease and notify people with whom they have come into contact that they may have been exposed. Without such a tool, the world is left with the same approaches public health workers have used since the nineteenth century: contact tracing and quarantines. There is currently no effective treatment or reliable vaccine for Covid-19. Covid-19 cases and deaths in the United States have exposed deep-seated racial inequalities, such as unequal access to health care and insurance, exacerbated by economic disparities. ![]()
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