A survey of 1.6 million U.S. homes shows 1 in 12 Hispanic homes reported serious COVID-19 symptom combinations: dry cough and difficulty breathing or fever and loss of taste or smell. Experts say the data may offer a fuller picture of the virus’ toll.
In Wake Forest, North Carolina, a town of about 40,000 near Raleigh, a sweeping national survey of COVID-19 symptoms has exposed a staggering ethnic divide.
When the list of symptoms is narrowed to what the Centers for Disease Control recently identified as the most serious pairs of ailments – dry cough and difficulty breathing, or fever and loss of taste or smell – the differences were far starker: Hispanics experienced them almost twice as often. The gap between Hispanics and the rest of the population is even wider in the symptoms data than in confirmed coronavirus case counts across 33 states that break down their tallies by race and ethnicity, USA TODAY’s analysis found.
As the pandemic progresses, evidence is mounting that the virus has hit people of color the hardest for reasons ranging from chronic health issues to service sector jobs. The symptoms survey, however, offers a unique window into the hidden prevalence of COVID-19, public health experts said. "We have already seen that the consequence of all these barriers is delaying care until it is absolutely necessary,” Lòpez-Cevallos said. “That same logic applies here.”
Torres thinks about catching the virus each time he and his father go to a job or the store to pick up materials. His mother is nervous about returning to work, lest she fall ill and infect others back at home. Lòpez-Cevallos notes that Latinos make up a large percentage of the nation’s essential workers — jobs such as grocery clerks, hotel staff and restaurant cooks — and often live in more confined spaces because of their low pay. Hispanic households also tend to be larger, including extended family, he said, which coincides with higher symptom rates in the data.
All five eventually tested positive for COVID-19. They quarantined themselves, living for a month mostly on the limited amount of rice, beans and tuna they had on hand. A church group occasionally left vegetables, water and other food items on their doorstep. A poll released May 20 by UnidosUS, in conjunction with SOMOS Healthcare and MoveOn, shows that one in four Latino respondents said they “knew someone” who wanted to but was not able to get tested for coronavirus, while half said they “knew someone ill with COVID-19 symptoms” who could not get tested.
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