Disparities continue as US tops 500,000 COVID deaths

One year after previous President Donald Trump told Americans that the unique coronavirus was ” quite under control in this nation,” the United States on Monday exceeded 500,000 deaths from COVID-19, according to information from Johns Hopkins University

The virus has actually spread out far and wide, with reported infections in every county in the nation, but there stays a consistent undercurrent of inequality in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Black and Hispanic people are still twice as most likely to die from COVID-19 as white Americans and three times most likely to be hospitalized with the infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That variation is much more stark for the American Indian population. Compared to white Americans, American Indian communities are nearly four times most likely to be hospitalized with COVID and more than twice as likely to pass away from the disease.

” It’s important to understand that the 500,000- person death toll that we have actually crossed didn’t to have be,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, informed ABC News.

” As we move forward into a brand-new stage of the pandemic with a vaccine program, it is important to bear in mind that up until the vaccine is in the arms of susceptible populations, we will continue to experience more deaths and hospitalizations,” he said.

Age has also remained a clear danger factor for passing away of COVID-19, with death rates increasing with each succeeding decade.

With their high populations, counties in Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago became a few of the places in the nation with the most deaths throughout the course of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Drilling down into those numbers mirrors national information and shows that the pandemic has actually been disproportionately hard on people of color in those cities.

As of late February, the COVID-19 death rate was greatest among Hispanic residents and second-highest among Black locals in Los Angeles County.

” When again, our Latinx neighborhood is bearing the worst from the pandemic,” Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County’s public health director, said during a news rundown earlier this month. New york city City reported a comparable dynamic, with the greatest death rates amongst Hispanic homeowners, followed by Black citizens.

In Chicago, Black locals fared worst, with the greatest reported death rate of any group

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

What to learn about the coronavirus:

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the unique coronavirus with the full ABC News group, consisting of the latest news, context and analysis.