UN: Virus Fatality Rate among US Minorities Reveals “Endemic Inequalities”

By Staff, Agencies

The UN rights chief said Tuesday the coronavirus pandemic's disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities in the US and protests triggered by George Floyd's death had laid bare “endemic inequalities” that must be addressed.

Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, raised the situation in the United States and a range of countries, saying data shows the COVID-19 crisis has had a worse impact on racial and ethnic minorities.

sThis virus is exposing endemic inequalities that have too long been ignored,” she said in a statement.

Similar inequalities were also fueling the widespread protests in hundreds of US cities over the police killing in Minneapolis last week of Floyd, an unarmed black man.

“In the United States, protests triggered by the killing of George Floyd are highlighting not only police violence against people of color, but also inequalities in health, education, employment and endemic racial discrimination,” Bachelet said.

She noted the virus death rate for African Americans is reported to be more than double that of other racial groups in the United States.

Her statement also highlighted the situation in Britain, where government data for England and Wales shows a death rate for blacks, ethnic Pakistanis and Bangladeshis that is nearly double that of whites.

And she pointed to Brazil, where people of color in Sao Paulo are 62 percent more likely to die from the virus than whites, and in France's heavily minority-inhabited Seine Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, which has reported higher excess mortality than other areas.