Two years ago, the first case of COVID-19 appeared in Delaware.
Over that stretch of time, data has emerged showing the disparate impact of the pandemic on different groups of people.
According to the CDC, the number of COVID hospitalizations for American Indian or Alaska Native, Non-Hispanic persons was about 3 times that of White, Non-Hispanic persons. It was more than 2 times higher for Black, and Hispanic and Latinx persons.
Case numbers and death counts followed the same pattern.
Jennifer Horney is the Director of the Epidemiology Program at the University of Delaware. She says she hopes the pandemic will provide groundwork for addressing inequality in disaster response.
“I think that the inequities that have become more visible during the pandemic will help us make the case for investing in resilience and adaptive capacity that will be needed to reduce the inequities that happen after disasters and emergencies,” said Horney.
She adds that COVID-19 isn’t the first example of inequity in disaster response, citing Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, but these numbers, and the longevity of the pandemic, will make it much harder to forget.
But the long lasting effects of COVID-19 span beyond the case numbers, and even COVID itself, according to Horney.
She says it’s easy to measure COVID’s direct impacts, such as the case numbers, hospitalizations, and death count.
“It’s much harder to measure the indirect impacts. If a person dies of cancer in 4 or 5 years that could have been found early, and wasn’t, due to a missed screening. Or stress and anxiety leads someone to have a stroke in 10 years that they otherwise wouldn’t have,” Horney explained. “We don’t have what we call a counterfactual, so we don’t know what would have happened without COVID.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a decrease in overall preventative care, such as cancer screenings, lead screenings, and routine vaccinations, all of which can have hazardous effects to both individual and community health in the long run.
Horney points out that while preventative care may feel like it's optional in some ways, screenings and vaccinations may help prevent disasters similar to the COVID-19 pandemic.
