Regional and state officials have failed Latino residents, leaving them to disproportionately suffer the devastating impacts of the pandemic. And many of those leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, continue to repeat past mistakes.
It was a year ago today that health officials from six counties announced directives for millions to stay home as part of the nation’s first shelter-in-place order. It became a model that Gov. Gavin Newsom soon imposed statewide and other parts of the country followed.
But in ensuing weeks and months, those six counties — Santa Clara, San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Contra Costa and Marin — failed to address the severity of the impact on Latino communities. And state officials failed to even recognize the problem until months into the pandemic.
A four-month Bay Area News Group investigation, published Sunday, reveals that the COVID case rate among Latinos in those six counties was more than four times that of Whites. Predominantly Latino communities in the Bay Area were tested much less often than majority White areas, relative to their risk of infection.
Bay Area counties failed to deploy enough Spanish-speaking contact tracers and calls for help from the state went unmet. Meanwhile, Newsom permitted the first premature reopening in May, when Latinos made up 78% of all new cases in the six-county area.
It’s not surprising that the COVID impact would fall disproportionately on Latinos, who often live in crowded conditions, have no alternative to working outside the home and often have front-line essential jobs.
Yet the California Department of Public Health didn’t notice the disproportionate Latino case and death numbers until summer 2020, according to a department spokesperson. At the same time, the Newsom administration and Bay Area counties stonewalled on release of key data, making it hard for scientists, journalists and members of the public to document what was going on.
It turns out that while Newsom was pushing to reopen construction jobs, for example, one community group in heavily Latino East Oakland found that 68% of construction workers it tested on its own had COVID.
Now data shows that Latinos, who make up 23% of the population in the six-county region, have suffered 50% of the cases. And, as we enter the what we hope will be the final phase of the pandemic, vaccination, Latinos have received just 12% of the shots.
To his credit, Newsom has made vaccinating vulnerable communities a priority. But, just as he and his health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, were late to recognize the COVID impact in the Latino community, they have been months late with statewide inoculation logistics.
Throughout the pandemic, Newsom and Ghaly have left it to the counties to lead and then swooped in and big-footed by imposing their standards. Now they’re doing the same with vaccinations.
Many counties spent months working out plans involving their own health departments and community organizations that serve vulnerable populations, including especially Latino communities. But the state is insisting on taking away the counties’ ability to distribute vaccines to those organizations — undermining arrangements county officials have spent months developing.
A thoughtful statewide approach for injections would have been great months ago. But counties were left to fill the void. The counties’ rollouts have been far from flawless, although their greatest obstacle has been a lack of steady vaccine supply.
More than three months since the start of vaccinations, Newsom and Ghaly should be working with the counties rather than trying to run roughshod over them. It’s likely that, like with the premature reopening, the botched statewide testing plan and the dearth of contact tracing, this will end badly — and Latino communities will suffer the most.
