As the pandemic continued to rage, the high-poverty neighborhoods seemed to be more affected and battered with COVID-19 infections than the affluent areas. This is a trend that highlights the higher risks low-wage workers face in the COVID surge. A review by California Healthline made from local data from a dozen populous counties has revealed that communities with high-poverty rates have about three times more confirmed COVID-19 infection than the wealthier area.
By the end of November, the analysis showed that 49 residents out of every 1000 in poor urban areas tested positive for coronavirus. Compared to affluent urban areas, only 16 out of each 1000 residents tested positive for the coronavirus. Epidemiologists have stated that these findings are evidence of the risk being posed to low-wage workers who usually carry out jobs the state and federal government has tagged essential during the pandemic.
Such jobs include:
- Meat processors.
- Hospital janitors.
- Home health aides.
- Grocery store clerks.
- Other retail and service jobs that keep the rest of the residents comfortable and well-fed.
Jobs like these cannot be handled remotely, and therefore, such people stand the risk of being infected by the coronavirus. People in these poor urban communities live paycheck to paycheck, and even when they don’t feel okay to go to work and want to quarantine, the need to pay rent and also meet up with bills overcomes their desire.
While examining income and the coronavirus infection rates, the California Healthline used data that showed the number of infection cases in twelve populous counties. The rates were then cross-referenced with each county’s poverty level, and the poverty line was set at $26,00 annual income for a family of four. This analysis further revealed a trend in the COVID spread as neighborhoods in the same city, which are usually separated by miles, only had significantly different infection rates. The higher infection was found in areas with higher=poverty rates.
A clear example of this division could be seen in the case of Southern Oakland and the Upper Rockridge neighborhood. 30% of residents lived below the poverty line in Southern Oakland, and about 54 out of every 1000 residents were found infected. Upper Rockridge, which was just some miles north, had only 5% living below the poverty rate and could only count 4 out of every 1,000 residents infected.
The Family Health Centers of San Diego further supports this claim by stating that 90% of patients were usually low-income earners, and about 30% of them don’t have insurance. The pandemic cases’ surge has affected these communities more speedily than the affluent neighborhoods have been affected. The communities close to the Mexican border have the lowest socioeconomic status and are hit the hardest by the COVID-19.
These communities’ residents also state that their employees usually refused to give them leave to miss work, except there is a formal statement issued that they needed to stay home. Failure to meet this requirement and they stood a chance of losing their job. Although research shows that low-income residents are doing just as much to curtail the spread of the virus, they only seemed to have a problem maintaining physical distance when it came to work-related issues.
The COVID-19 might be hitting the high-poverty neighborhoods more because most of these neighborhood residents tend to live in crowded households. Isolating becomes much harder when you’re poor; there’s not enough space to separate from the rest of the household. Therefore, other household members also stand the chance of getting infected by the virus. Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who is the professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California-San Francisco, has stated that it is usually expected that poor communities have a higher infection rate during a pandemic. Therefore, the policymakers need to put protections in place to help such communities address their needs in the pandemic.
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