TOLEDO, Ohio — A Toledo physician held a state-wide spotlight Thursday at the Governor's daily coronavirus briefing discussing how race could impact the death rate from the virus.
"The fatality rates were twice as high in African Americans and Hispanics," President of the Ohio State Medical Association Dr. Anthony Armstrong said.
This alarming statistic coming from large cities cross the U.S. is why Gov. Mike DeWine wanted Armstrong from Toledo to speak in front of the state Thursday as we see death and infection rates from coronavirus rise.
"He did want to touch on the disparities with the coronavirus and what they were starting to see in places like New Orleans and Chicago and Detroit," Armstrong said.
For Example, according to research by BET, the Cook County Coroner's office in Chicago is showing that 70% of COVID-19 deaths are African Americans, while less than a third of the city is black.
"From lack of access to physicians which we know there's a shortage to nurses which we know there's a shortage, and we've been lobbying for that for 40 or 50 years for the federal government to address and haven't gotten anywhere," Armstrong said.
He said the disparities aren't just unique to the pandemic. Armstrong predicts many of the same contributing factors are happening now.
"I think that we might find that it is lower income people, impoverished, just generally overall in less good overall health and higher density housing areas," Armstrong said.
Armstrong hopes the disparities like lack of clear access to healthcare or fear of affordability, can lead to more research and work to fix these issues even after the pandemic.
"No, there's not going to be a fix overnight and I don't know if there's going to be a fix in 2, 5 or 10 years, but we don't know what the healthcare system's going to look like when the smoke starts to clear from all of this," Armstrong said.