Before the pandemic, America's communities of color were already economically vulnerable. Women of color account for the largest number of industries with the largest number of pandemic-related job losses, including hospitality, education and health services. In the third year of a global pandemic, we must end practices and policies that ignore, marginalize, and neglect people of color with long-term COVID patients.
While clinics have been opened across the country to treat long-term COVID-19 patients. But clinicians say they see few people of color in those clinics, even though both black and brown communities have been hit hard by prolonged COVID. Because clinics need insurance, and many people of color don't have insurance. About 20 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of Blacks in the U.S. are uninsured.
So we call on members of color in the U.S. Congress and Vice President Harris of Color to:
1. Incorporate long-term COVID into the narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic; we cannot tell the COVID story without discussing long-term COVID;
2. Recognizing the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and prolonged COVID on already marginalized communities of color, including Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities;
3. Investigate how existing COVID-19 policies and legislation have systematically harmed communities of color and propose reparations.
We are living through a mass disabling event, and people of color with long-term COVID must be at the forefront of responding to this unprecedented time!
