16A Friday-Sunday, July 3-5, 2020 Denton Record-Chronicle

said this stems from socioeco-nomic status. People who are considered the majority — which is not always the numer-ical majority — are the people who have the most valued re-sources such as wealth, prestige and power. Moore said socio-economic status tends to fall along racial lines.

“We know that health doesn’t begin when you’re an adult or a certain age — it begins at conception,” Moore said. “The environment you live in, the experiences you have during pregnancy … affects the out-come of your health. … People with fewer valued resources tend to have poor health. It’s not because they don’t know about healthy behaviors necessarily, but social factors push them to have poor health.”

Denton County Public Health first started reporting racial and ethnic demograph-ics with COVID-19 numbers in mid-June. Non-Hispanic white Denton County residents made up 58.2% of the county population in 2018 but account for 33.82% of coronavirus cas-es and 54.05% of deaths, as of Thursday.

“In terms of COVID more specifically, it’s really just a melt-ing pot of contributing factors when we look at who has to

work outside of the home, who lives in multi-generational or multifamily homes, who has the best access to care. … It’s pretty clear the level of susceptibili-

ty,” said Texas Woman’s Univer-sity professor Ratonia Runnels, who has also researched health disparities.

Latinos in Denton County make up 34.33% of cases and 21.62% of deaths but account for 19.5% of the population. Black Denton County residents account for 10.2% of the popula-tion but make up 11.79% of cas-es and 5.41% of deaths. About 11.56% of patients’ races are re-ported as unknown.

“Our local demographic data is showing Hispanic communi-ty members in Denton County are disproportionately affected

by COVID-19,” Matt Richard-son, director of Denton County Public Health, said during a Commissioners Court meeting in June.

While Black Americans make up about 11% of the country’s pop-ulation, they account for 20.7% of COVID-19 cases and 22.8% of deaths where race is reported, ac-cording to data from the Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC says non-Hispan-ic Black people in America are hospitalized at a rate five times higher than non-Hispanic white people.

Some of the reasons they list for why people of color are disproportionately affected in-clude living in densely populat-ed areas; Latinos being three times as likely to be uninsured as their white counterparts, and non-Hispanic Black Americans twice as likely; language barri-

ers; and Black Americans expe-riencing higher rates of chronic conditions at earlier ages and higher death rates than their white counterparts.

“For African Americans, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment is at the forefront when we talk about distrust,” Runnels said. “Another issue for Latinos here in Texas and California is im-migration status, a fear of being reported and also possibly the language barrier. Cultural and linguistic competence can be improved ... to ensure people are being prosperity treated.”

The Tuskegee Institute and Public Health Service in 1932 began the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” according to the CDC. Of the 600 men, 399 had syphilis and 201 didn’t.

“Researchers told the men they were being treated for ‘bad blood,’ a local term used to de-

scribe several ailments, includ-ing syphilis, anemia and fatigue. In truth, they did not receive the proper treatment needed to cure their illness,” the CDC states.

Essential services are also a factor in people of color facing higher rates of COVID-19 cas-es and deaths. The New York Times reported in late June that counties where the population is at least 25% Latino have seen higher rates of coronavirus in-fections. Latinos made up 34.7% of cases in the U.S. and 18.5% of the U.S. population.

People in racial and ethnic minority groups are more like-ly to work in conditions where there’s an increased risk, such as in essential services and jobs where they don’t have sick leave, experts say.

“A lot of low-income people, the jobs they have are consid-ered essential services, so they were going to work [during

stay-at-home orders],” Moore said. “And some of the places of work, [the work administra-tion] didn’t know what to do. A lot of these stores didn’t start implementing measures until later. At the beginning when you went to grocery stores, you saw people with no masks servicing others. It put a lot of low-income people at risk.”

Progression in the health care industry with cultural and linguistic competence includes providing information in other languages. The Texas Tribune reported in 2015 that Spanish is the top language other than English spoken in Texas house-holds. Almost 7 million out of 24 million Texans speak Spanish.

“At the university, I’m also the director of field education,” Runnels said. “One project that consistently comes around for students [interning for social work] is to develop some type of

bilingual or translate literature for clients to Spanish.”

Both Denton County Public Health and the Texas Depart-ment of State Health Services provide COVID-19 information to residents in Spanish on social media and official coronavirus online pages.

While more people are talking about health disparities now, Moore said this shouldn’t be something people focus on only right now.

“It’s a shame that COVID-19 is the reason people think about health disparities,” Moore said. “They’ve been in the U.S. for the longest. Progress hasn’t been substantial to a point where COVID-19 will not be showing [disparity] gaps. We don’t need to wait for another pandemic to be discussing these issues.”

ZAIRA PEREZ can be reached at 940-566-6882 and via Twitter at @zairalperez.

Jeff Woo/DRCConstruction crews work on the new Denton County courthouse Tuesday.

right here on this campus.”While Denton did experience some

above-average rainfall during construc-tion, Cobb said that possibility was accounted for in the mid-October esti-mate.

After the building is completed in October, Cobb said it likely will take until late November for the building to be furnished and staff from the Joseph A. Carroll Building and Courthouse on the Square move in.

Cobb said construction is current-ly working to finish the courthouse’s dome, the frame of which was placed in June 2019.

Most of the work on the dome is complete, she said. Workers are cre-ating and installing scaffolding to add shingles to the incomplete portions of the dome.

Cobb said workers still have “a lot of landscaping to do,” and they are also working to finish interior work and the concrete for the sidewalks and plant-ers.

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Courthouse

programs to boost recycling and other programs that divert trash from the heap, he added. Denton’s 28% recycling rate is about 6 percentage points higher than the state average and also higher than recycling rates in Dallas and Fort Worth.

Resident and participant Brad Pollock said he was concerned the ex-pansion would affect the Ryan High School campus with more dust and odors. The campus is about 2 miles north of the landfill.

Crews at the landfill work to mini-mize dust and odors, particularly from getting off the site, Boerner said.

However, the weather sometimes affects those conditions for many nearby residents and businesses on Denton’s east side.

Longtime resident Sharon Speiss,

who lives just north of the landfill, has noticed more truck traffic on Mayhill Road.

“The odor and blown trash that already exists are greater than they should be,” Speiss said.

In addition to the online public hearing, residents and activists provid-ed dozens of written comments, most opposing the landfill’s expansion.

The comments become part of the public record that goes to the TCEQ commissioners.

The TCEQ staff will make a recom-mendation, but it’s the commissioners who grant, modify or deny Denton’s permit application.

Generally, the commissioners meet twice a month. Denton’s permit appli-cation has not yet been scheduled for a commission agenda.

PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881 and via Twitter at @phwolfeDRC.

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Landfill

Jeff Woo/DRC file photoCrews at work atop the Denton landfill in 2018. The city plans to expand the landfill by 100 acres to the north.

Fiona Scoggin/For the DRCDenton County Public Health provides a free drive-thru COVID-19 testing center on Tuesdays at the University of North Texas’ Union Circle Parking Garage.

Ratonia Runnels

LOCAL/NATIONAL

BRIEFLYACROSS THE NATION

Chicago

2 week quarantine for some Chicago travelers

People traveling to Chicago from 15 states with increasing numbers of confirmed cases of the coronavirus will have to quarantine for two weeks upon

arrival or face possible fines, city officials announced Thursday.

To comply with the order that takes effect Monday, travel-ers must stay at a single home or other dwelling for 14 days except to seek medical care or be tested for COVID-19.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on

Twitter that the order is intend-ed to “preserve the gains Chica-go had made.”

The city has reported 52,569 confirmed cases and 2,611 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Both categories have trended down in recent weeks and the city has allowed many

businesses to reopen, including bars and restaurants with limits on customers.

The city’s Department of Pub-lic Health Commissioner said the specific states listed are based on the rate of new confirmed cases per 100,000 residents.

As of Thursday, that means

people coming from Alabama, Ar-kansas, Arizona, California, Flori-da, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ne-vada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah will be affected.

The order also applies to city residents returning from a visit to a designated state.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuo-mo announced last week that people from nine states hit hard by the COVID-19 virus will be required to quarantine for two weeks when they arrive in his state, Connecticut and New Jer-sey.

— The Associated Press

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Virus