(CNN Español) – The United States had 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus, a figure no other country has counted.
In this episode, Dr. Elmer Huerta why, if the United States has a lower death rate than other countries, it still leads the number of deaths.
We also assess whether socio-economic and racial conditions are an important factor in this number.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Hi, I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information about the new coronavirus. Information that we hope will be helpful in caring for your health and that of your family.
The United States is about to be the first country to have half a million deaths from covid-19 in the world.
The death rate in the United States
The covid-19 daily death rate in the United States, in December 2020, was equal to the daily passenger death rate on 15 Airbus 320 aircraft carrying 150 passengers each.
Today we will see what are the main social factors that can influence such a high number of deaths.
The term mortality in public health refers to the number of deaths from a disease in a specific period and geographic location. With this data it is then said that in a certain country there were a certain number of deaths in a year.
Because not all countries have the same population and in order to compare the number of deaths, the specialists correct the data, refer to the number of inhabitants and calculate the death rate per 100,000 inhabitants.
For example, the United States, with more than 500,000 deaths and the highest absolute number in the world, has 152 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, a lower death rate than Belgium, England, Italy, Portugal and other countries.
That said, what’s important to be able to compare mortality data from different countries, it’s important to analyze why there have been so many deaths in the United States.
Why does the US record so many deaths from Covid-19?
Many studies have been done to answer this question, and most point to social, economic, racial and health reasons.
A study conducted at the University of California, San Diego to find out if ‘essential’ workers – mostly immigrants and from racial and ethnic minorities – are at higher risk of death from COVID-19 found that Farmworkers employees face unique risks to contract COVID-19 and die from the disease.
The study concludes that this higher mortality can be statistically associated with certain social health determinants, such as not speaking English and living in poverty.
In another mathematical simulation study conducted by Harvard University researchers, they try to find out why deaths from COVID-19 are disproportionately common among racial and ethnic minorities, and in areas with the highest concentration of poverty.
Researchers find huge social differences in covid-19 mortality.
For example, adults living in households with incomes below the country’s average income were responsible for two-thirds of deaths from COVID-19.
Likewise, people who dropped out of high school were responsible for about 1 in 4 deaths, while veterans accounted for nearly 1 in 5 deaths.
Minorities, those who have the most deaths due to coronavirus in the country register
The authors conclude that society should guarantee adequate access to health systems for these groups and that public health measures should be specifically targeted at these groups.
Another interesting Canadian pre-release shows that provinces with a higher percentage of Republican voters, heavy drinkers, children in one-parent families, with more uninsured adults, with more racial minorities, with more women, higher population density, higher environmental pollution, and residential areas. segregation between whites and non-whites, had higher death rates from covid-19.
In summary, Covid-19, which became the third cause of death in the United States since October 2020 for people aged 45 to 84 and the second cause of death for people over 85, has very socioeconomic roots. that the pandemic has only exposed the socio-economic inequalities of the countries it has passed through.
Do you have questions about Covid-19?
Send me your questions on Twitter, we’ll try to answer them in our next installments. You can find me at @DrHuerta
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