SC lawmakers want more info on who has died from coronavirus, citing racial disparities
UPDATED: This article has been updated to reflect that state health officials have released statewide demographic data on the people who have died from the coronavirus in South Carolina.
Two state lawmakers want the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to release more demographic data and information on who has tested positive for the coronavirus and who has died.
In a letter to the state’s health agency, Democratic State Reps. Patricia Henegan and John King, both African Americans who represent districts with large black populations, said they want to know if the coronavirus is disproportionately affecting minority communities, especially among the people who have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
As of Wednesday 63 people in South Carolina have died from COVID-19, out of the 2,552 confirmed cases.
The lawmakers also asked DHEC if it had projections it could release of how many minorities in state have potentially contracted the coronavirus.
Henegan is from Marlboro County, a rural community in the Pee Dee, whose population is 51% African American. King is from York County, which includes Rock Hill, a city whose population is 39% African American.
“In addition, we request the agency’s plans to mitigate any disproportionate impact caused by COVID-19 on these communities,” Henegan and King wrote in their letter.
Previously, when DHEC announced a death of someone who had COVID-19, the agency releases the county of the resident and notes whether they had underlying health conditions and whether the person was elderly, which DHEC defines 65 years and older. It previously only released demographic breakdown of confirmed cases.
After calls for further information to be disclosed, DHEC is now releasing demographic data of people who have died.
During a call with reporters on Wednesday, DHEC’s Acting Director of Public Health Nicholas Davidson said it would start routinely releasing information of race, age group and gender of people who died with from complications of the coronavirus in South Carolina.
“We understand people want that data and many bits of data,” Davidson said.
According to data released by DHEC, African Americans make up 46% of those who had died from complications of the coronavirus in South Carolina. According to the Census Bureau, African Americans make up 27% of the state’s population.
Whites people made up 41% of those who died in the state, but they make up 68.5% of the state’s population.
Data on the specific underlying conditions in patients who died may not be available, but DHEC will look to describe the conditions the agency is seeing frequently, Davidson said.
According to data released by DHEC, African Americans make up 38% of the confirmed coronavirus cases in the state.
“The provisional data provided by the agency that reports African Americans already make up a disproportionate percentage of the state’s COVID-19 cases, relative to the state’s overall population is truly alarming,” the legislators wrote in a letter to DHEC. “We must work quickly to find solutions to address this troubling statistic.”
“If we see an underlying problem, maybe we can do something to help,” Henegan added.
In other parts of the country, African Americans make up a larger share of the people dying from the coronavirus than their share of the population overall, according to a Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions that report coronavirus deaths by race, which include the southern states of Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Tuesday said the COVID-19 crisis is spotlighting health disparities in the African American community.
“It’s not that they are getting infected more often. It’s that when they do get infected, their underlying medical conditions — the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity, the asthma — those are the kinds of things that wind them up in the ICU, and ultimately give them a higher death rate,” Fauci said during a White House briefing.
Henegan in an interview said she wants DHEC to release more information on who has died in South Carolina from COVID-19, including the racial backgrounds of the deceased and the exact underlying health conditions.
She said her county ranks high for diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and heart attacks.
“We have a high poverty level, which worries me,” Henegan told The State. “Many of them don’t have insurance to go to the doctor. Many don’t realize they could be checked without worrying about money.”
“Most of the individuals are minority and basically have the underlying illness,” Henegan said. “That worries me.”
Another South Carolina lawmaker has called for more demographic data of those affected by the coronavirus.
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-North Charleston, the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate, has now written to the federal Health and Human Services Department about the concerns of the “patchwork” of reporting around the country of demographic data. He added the federal government has the ability to collect the information.
“As we develop a more robust understanding of how COVID-19 impacts different communities, as well as what underlying or associated factors may drive these differences, we can more effectively address the needs at hand and more aggressively combat this terrible disease, enabling us to better serve all Americans,” Scott wrote.
This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 2:30 PM.
