COVID-19's Toll on California's Latinos

Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, HPM faculty, and Dr. Paul Hsu, Epidemiology faculty, discuss how Latinos have seen the highest rate of COVID-19 infections and deaths ins the state. Dr. Hayes-Bautista and Dr. Hsu discuss the inequities in social determinants and how these inequities are exacerbated by a "one-size-fits-all" approach to protective pandemic measures.

“The strong Latino work ethic is seen in the fact that Latino households have more wage earners than non-Hispanic white households,” he says. “However, when they have to work more exposed to the coronavirus than white-collar workers, when they are paid very little for their hard work, when they are less likely to be offered health insurance, when they are less likely to find a doctor who can speak Spanish, it is no wonder that working-age Latinos have higher case rates and death rates than the general population. COVID brought a lot of preexisting inequities to a head."