There's new evidence more African Americans may be dying from coronavirus in the United States than whites or other ethnic groups, according to a new study. Black Americans represent 13.4% of the American population, according to the US Census Bureau, but counties with higher black populations account for more than half of all Covid-19 cases and almost 60% of deaths, the study found.

Disparities, including access to health care, are likely to blame, researchers concluded in a report released Tuesday. The team of epidemiologists and clinicians at four universities worked with amfAR, the AIDS research non-profit, and Seattle's Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access, PATH, to analyze cases and deaths using county-level comparisons. Racial data is still lacking in many areas, and their analysis uses what data was available as of mid-April.

"Social conditions, structural racism, and other factors elevate risk for COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths in black communities," wrote the scientists from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. America's black and Hispanic communities are bearing the brunt of the coronavirus

"Collectively, these data demonstrate significantly higher rates of diagnoses and deaths in disproportionately black counties compared to other counties, as well as greater diabetes diagnoses, heart disease deaths, and cerebrovascular disease deaths in unadjusted analyses," the authors concluded. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, is currently under consideration by a medical journal and has not yet been published.

Of the more than 3,100 counties researchers looked at with coronavirus cases and deaths from late January to mid-April, they found a greater percentage of disproportionately black counties were in the South. The African American populations ranged from 13% of the county total to over 87%."Structural factors including health care access, density of households, unemployment,.

Waiting for other states to collect data on ethnicity will be too late. Federal and local officials must act now to help communities of color. At minimum, they can ensure these communities have access to free tests, assist them with filing unemployment benefits, and help secure business grants and other financial assistance. Otherwise, the indignation is meaningless. Elvia Díaz is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic where this column first appeared. Follow her on Twitter, @elviadiaz1.

It’s clear that too many Americans have been left behind economically in the richest country in the world, and now they’re paying with their lives. But what is America going to do about it? Data out of Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey and North Carolina is enough to show the disparity. Waiting for other states to collect data on ethnicity will be too late. Federal and local officials must act now to help communities of color. At minimum, they can ensure these communities.

Communities of color have long been economically marginalized. But instead of lifting them, too many government and business leaders have simply dismissed them as lazy and unwilling to pull themselves by their own bootstraps. It’s always been known that African Americans, Latinos and other communities of color are disproportionately poor with little or no access to health care. With that comes underlying health conditions.

Barber argues that policies dating back to the 1930s have left many neighborhoods with black residents lacking job opportunities, stable housing and lack of grocery stores with healthy food. That leaves African Americans, she told The Times, with disproportionate rates of asthma and diabetes. Nobody should be shocked that blacks are dying are a higher rate than everyone else. Everyone, though, should be outraged.

Another fact is that African Americans and other minorities are disproportionally holding jobs that don’t allow them to work or stay home, like most others are doing to ride out the pandemic. Who’s really shocked that black people are dying at higher rates from? Mainstream America, of course. The same folks who have not only ignored the deep-rooted economic disparity of people of color but who have fostered it with racial bias.

“I don’t know who that man was,” Davis said. “But in some way, he gave me hope.”

“I don't have the energy and the consciousness to tell them not to live their life with creativity, and expect humanity to be treated like human beings.” Feeling human, feeling listened to, is what Davis says is most important to him right now. And though he is shaken by his experience last Friday, he notes that while facing the police officers in the convenience store, he did find someone to listen.

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, renowned basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes, “African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer.” “Right now it’s George, Breonna, and Ahmaud. Before that it was Eric, Sandra, and Michael. It just goes on, and on, and on,” former first lady Michelle Obama wrote on Twitter.

That came up. Going to the all-white high school, being one of 12 black kids - the harassment and threats out there. That exploded. The many times I've been stopped by the cops harassing me,” Davis said. “All that erupted in my gut ... I turned to the cops. I had no fear. And I just said, ‘a black man's feelings are never regarded because white people have been trained, particularly police, to dehumanize them.”