AP Interview: Biden adviser says race central to virus fight

Addressing racial disparities in the U.S. coronavirus crisis cannot be an afterthought, a top adviser to President-elect Joe Biden on the COVID-19 pandemic response said Tuesday.

That means when testing and vaccination programs are designed and implemented, for example, they must consider fairness and equity along with efficiency in order to be truly effective, said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an expert on health care inequality at Yale University, in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We cannot get this pandemic under control if we do not address head-on the issues of inequity in our country," she said. "There is no other way.”

Nunez-Smith, associate dean for health equity research at Yale’s medical school, co-chairs Biden’s advisory board on the coronavirus pandemic with former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler.

Biden’s choice of Nunez-Smith to help lead his pandemic task force signaled his intention to address the pandemic’s unequal toll on minorities, who disproportionally have jobs on the front lines, medical conditions associated with severe disease, higher rates of poverty and poor access to health care.

For Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans in the U.S., the rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 are two to four times higher than for whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It means that almost 50 percent of people of color in this country know someone who has died from COVID-19,” she said. “And quite frankly, it’s getting harder to find anyone in this country who doesn’t know someone who has been affected by COVID-19 or themselves has been affected.”

She emphasized she is not the only one on the Biden team advocating for...