New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that testing sites will open in predominantly minority communities, where African American and Hispanic residents are dying from coronavirus at twice the rate of white residents. The mayor said the city cannot accept the inequality and called on the federal government to provide additional testing kits.
The new testing sites will be located in East New York, Brooklyn; Morrisania in the Bronx; Harlem; Jamaica, Queens; and Clifton, Staten Island. They will operate under NYC Health + Hospitals, the public benefit corporation that manages the city's public hospitals and clinics. The system will prioritise those with underlying health conditions and at greater risk of serious illness.
Preliminary data released by the city on Wednesday showed that Latinos make up 34% of coronavirus fatalities, despite being 29% of the population, while blacks represent 28% of deaths but only 22% of the population. The death rate for Hispanics is 22 per 100,000, for African Americans 20 per 100,000, for whites 10 per 100,000, and for Asians 8 per 100,000. De Blasio said the figures debunk the belief that coronavirus is an equal opportunity killer.
The mayor also defended his decision to close public schools for the rest of the academic year, despite a dispute with Governor Andrew Cuomo over who has the authority to do so. Cuomo said the decision was his legal authority and that any plan would be driven by data and science.
