General Discussion

Data released on Wednesday night by the New York City health authority shows that it is the poorest districts that have been hit hardest by the spread of coronavirus. Residents in the Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona sections of Queens, which are poorer and could be more likely to have many people living under one roof, have tested positive for the virus in far greater numbers and at higher rates per capita than in wealthy, mostly white parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

According to an Associated Press report, people living in one Queens zip code just south of LaGuardia airport were roughly four times as likely to have tested positive as people in the gentrified section of Brooklyn where Mayor Bill de Blasio lives. According to the AP’s report:

The numbers back something that has, for days, seemed obvious at Elmhurst hospital, the only major medical center serving that part of Queens where infections are most prevalent. Long lines of people waiting for testing and treatment outside the hospital have been one of the defining images of the pandemic, as have stories of multiple deaths in Elmhurst’s overburdened wards.

Dr Mitchell Katz, the chief executive of the city-run hospital system, told the agency that housing could be playing a role. He said: We know that in Queens, many families, because of poverty, live together in very close quarters. So that while we are practising as a city social distancing, you may have multiple families living together in a very small apartment. And so its easy to understand why theres a lot of transmission of Covid occurring.