As of May 4, the Department of Public Health of Illinois has reported at least 15,000 COVID-19 cases among Latinos. As of March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had reported a difference among the infection rates of various ethnic and racial groups.

According to the reports of the CDC, the data of 580 hospitalized patients from March which were confirmed by laboratories to have been infected by the novel coronavirus revealed that 45 percent of the people whose ethnicity and the race was available were white, compared to 55 percent of people in the community. However, 33 percent of patients who were hospitalized were black compared to 18 percent in the community. Additionally, 8 percent were Hispanic compared to 14 percent in the community, says an article.

Among the deaths caused by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, for which data about race and ethnicity were available, it was found out that the death toll among Black-Americans was 92.3 deaths every 100,000 people in the population. Hispanic people were higher, with 74.3 compared to white people with 45.2 or Asian with 34.5 individuals.


Testing Positive for the Novel Coronavirus

Based on the Department of Public Health in Illinois, Hispanics make up 15,026 people who are testing positive for COVID-19 compared to at least 12,400 people from the Black community who are testing positive for the novel coronavirus. Additionally, more than 13,800 in the White community and at least 2,000 from the Asian community have tested positive.

Some Latinos have been testing positive for the deadly SARS-CoV-2 despite making up less than a fifth of the total population of the state.


The Closeness of Families

According to Doctor Ngozi Ezike, the Illinois Public Health Director, one of the amazing things about Latino culture is the closeness of families where children, parents, and grandparents are living together. This allows the virus to spread easily among them.

Also, Doctor Marina del Rios, an emergency medicine practitioner at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago, stated that the other reason for the difficulty of Latinos to observe social distancing.

Additionally, del Rios said that the insufficiency of medical services and language barriers have contributed to the increasing number of COVID-19 positive Latinos.


Who Will Help Translate for Abuelita?

By limiting visitors, abuelitas will not have anyone to help her communicate and translate her sentences, says del Rios.

There are stories about individuals going to the hospital and were not able to express how sick they were due to language barriers. These people get sent home without receiving proper instructions, such as when they should come back. Sometimes it is too late when they come back, de Rios added.


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Not Only in the State

This is not only exclusive to the state of Illinois as some other states' Latino population and other minority groups are experiencing these situations and are affecting the spread of COVID-19.

For example, the acts of showing affection among Latinos have been seen as a cause of the fast spread of the deadly novel coronavirus.