Monnat discusses racial disparities, COVID-19 deaths in Miami Herald

April 20, 2020

The Miami Herald

Shannon Monnat

Sociology Department

Aging Studies Institute

Center for Policy Research

Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health

COVID-19

Longevity

Race & Ethnicity

United States

The Miami Herald

Shannon Monnat

In Miami-Dade, the county with the most confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida, African Americans who tested positive for the disease have died at a rate of 4.6 percent compared to a rate of 3.1 percent for white people and 1.7 percent for people whose race is classified as “other,” according to data provided in Friday’s health department report. "That’s a huge difference," says Shannon Monnat, Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion. "If these numbers start to scale up, we’re talking about almost twice as many excess deaths from this [COVID-19] among blacks." Monnat was interviewed for the Miami Herald article "Black people in Miami die of COVID-19 at a greater rate than whites, state data shows."

She was also interviewed for the Syracuse.com article "Coronavirus: How we might restart the CNY economy while keeping the virus at bay." "I don’t think we’re anywhere near having this conversation," she says. "Without widespread testing and without knowing the infection rate, we can’t responsibly predict when things could open back up."

04/20/20