Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers joins Zack Guzman to break down which demographics are being hit the hardest by the coronavirus pandemic.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: But right now we're digging into the updates we're getting out of the state of New York, again, reasons to be optimistic in terms of efforts, flattening the curve here in terms of the rise of coronavirus cases that we've been tracking. Governor Andrew Cuomo, though, did highlight questions regarding the disproportionate impact on communities of color, including blacks and Hispanics seeing a larger than expected share of cases compared to white New Yorkers. I want to dig into those numbers with Kristin Myers, who's been tracking this on not just a New York scale, but a national level, as well as the White House has raised similar concerns. Kristin?

KRISTIN MYERS: Hey, Zack. Yeah, so what we're seeing across the board is that communities of color, particularly black communities and Hispanic communities, are suffering disproportionately to coronavirus, particularly when you look at the death rate. The death rates for Hispanics and for black Americans are far greater than that of their white counterparts. Now, since you started on New York state, let's just dig in right on those numbers there. And I know we have a nice graphic there for everyone to see those figures at home.

So here in New York City, which is, far away, for any other city or county in the United States has the greatest amount of positive cases and deaths, you have in New York City, Hispanics make up 34% of the deaths here, despite only making up 29% of the population. Now, compare that to the deaths-- the death rate for black Americans here in New York City, who make up 20% of the deaths, despite being only 22% of the population. And then the number ticks down even more when you consider that to white Americans that are here in the city, 27% percent of whites are dying from coronavirus here in New York City, and they make up over 30% of the population.

Now, if you look at New York state, then this is excluding the city. The Hispanic death rate is actually the lowest there, 14%. And, of course, that's because they make up far less of the population, in the entire state, only about 11% of the population. The black death rate is 18%, while the white death rate is 62%. They, of course, make up 75% of the population in New York state, excluding, again, New York City.

Now, if you want to broaden it out, not every state is actually reporting information by race when it comes to the death rate. But what we are seeing is that the black death rate is sometimes well over 100% that of whites inside the country. So I want to show those, some of those figures. In Washington, DC, the black death rate is 59%. That is compared to only 18% for whites.

In Louisiana, it's almost 71%. That's compared to just under 30% for whites in that state. And in Illinois, almost 43% is-- is the death rate for blacks living in Illinois compared to around 36% for whites.

Now, the question, of course, is, why? Why are we seeing minority communities being disproportionately impacting-- impacted by this virus? And the answer's pretty simple. One, that when it comes to those underlying conditions that we've all been talking about, asthma, you know, diabetes, hypertension, things that make you more likely to catch the virus and also to die from or suffer disproportionately from the virus, we see those incidence rates far higher in minority communities than we do in white communities.

And then if you just want to look purely at insurance coverage, we know that across the United States, minorities are frequently more uninsured, I should say, compared to their white counterparts. The uninsured rate as of 2018 was roughly 20% for Hispanics, 12% for blacks. And that's compared to only 7-and-1/2-% for whites.

So when you look at the composite here, you are seeing that because of these different socioeconomic issues around health care, income, poverty, things like that, they are disproportionally impacting minority communities. And that means that they are suffering disproportionately from this virus and getting care, as necessary, if they find that they are suffering. So we are starting to see the trends show that, frankly, black Americans, Hispanic Americans are starting to suffer and die at far greater rates.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. And we heard Governor Cuomo say that it can't just be comorbidity, is wanting to investigate that issue further. When you look at Chicago, just shocking when you heard from the mayor saying that it was one of the most alarming figures she's seen since she's taken that post, looking at the fact that--

KRISTIN MYERS: Over [INAUDIBLE] percent.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, 72% of the virus-related fatalities in Chicago, despite only making up a third of the population in that city. So it is something that we [? haven't ?] [? seen ?] not just here in New York, but across the country as well. But Kristin Myers, thank you for bringing us that.