Behind the Numbers: Why Latinx Community Makes Up 75 Percent of County’s COVID-19 Cases

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It is a growing topic across the nation, widely reported by the LA Times, NBC News and other major media outlets.

America’s hispanic community is being disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. And that is especially true in Sonoma County.

The numbers are staggering. Rising from some 59 percent of cases in May to 75 percent in the latest June update, the burden of coronavirus on the Latinx community goes far beyond what would be considered normal, considering Latinx individuals represent just 27 percent of Sonoma County’s population. Across the county that means hispanic community members are nine times more likely to be infected than their white counterparts.

In California as a whole, latinos represent 40 percent of the population but 53 percent of all coronavirus cases.

So, what’s going on?

An analysis conducted by UC Berkeley found that across California, latinos are far less likely to report being able to work from home, with just 42 percent saying they could, while that number is 61 percent for whites. And latino members of the community are much more likely to work in so called “essential” and often low-paying jobs, like food service, construction and agriculture.

As California and the rest of the nation was being ordered to stay at home in mid and late March, non-essential businesses shut down or had their employees work from home. However, due to their disproportionate representation in “essential” jobs, a greater share of the Latinx community was going to work each day, and putting themselves in danger of exposure to the coronavirus.

Here in Sonoma County the numbers have swelled as county health officials have focused contact tracing and testing on clusters. In 23 multi-family households totaling 380 people, they have found an average of 9 cases in each household. The clustering has likely skewed Sonoma County’s numbers of relative Latinx cases upward. It now ranks among the highest in California.

Epidemiologists have long known that high density households mean an increased risk of the spread of the coronavirus. The prevalence of that household type in the hispanic community now seems to be one of the main drivers of infection.

In Sonoma County the public health officer says contact tracing and testing will continue to be used to identify clusters of infection, and to get those who test positive into isolation before a local cluster can spread more widely into the community.