Latino Community Faces Hurdles From COVID-19 And Higher Risks, But Has Not Seen Disproportionate Impacts Locally

While in parts of New York City, Nassau County and western Suffolk County, there has been evidence that the Latino immigrant community has represented an outsized portion of those suffering the ill-effects of COVID-19, on the South Fork that does not appear to have been case.

Officials from Stony Brook Southampton Hospital dispelled rumors floating around in recent weeks that Latino laborers made up the bulk of those hospitalized at the South Fork’s only hospital.

The proportions of patients at the hospital have trended with the overall demographics of the region, hospital representatives said, and the highest numbers of patients in the hospital suffering the worst effects of the disease have been senior citizens.

“To date, hospitalized patients testing positive for COVID-19 reflect the East End’s many communities with the highest percentage being elderly and/or those with underlying health conditions,” said Barbara Jo Howard, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s director of communications and marketing.

Statistics released by New York State show that the Hispanic population of New York City has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, representing 34 percent of all the deaths recorded in the city, but only 29 percent of the total population. Outside of New York City, the disparity in the Spanish-speaking community has been slightly less, with the fatalities among Hispanics representing 14 percent of the total deaths, among a demographic that is just 12 percent of the statewide population.

Black families have been hit the most disproportionately hardest in New York — 18 percent of the total fatalities among just 9 percent of the total population — a trend that has been seen nationwide.

White residents of the state have made up 60 percent of the fatalities — the only disease statistics the state has made public by demographics — but are 74 percent of the general population.

Within the South Fork’s Spanish-speaking community itself, there is acknowledgment that language barriers and general mistrust of public institutions among those without legal immigration status have posed additional hurdles in some corners of the immigrant community, especially early in the outbreak, but that despite concerns that public health advice from officials agencies was not reaching Spanish-speaking communities — something officials in up-Island communities did struggle with — the reaction to social distancing guidelines and personal isolation was otherwise quickly adopted.

“Everyone I know, most of us were out of work and it has been very difficult, but people are afraid of getting sick and are being careful,” said Martin Aguilar-Valencia, a native of Ecuador who lives in Hampton Bays. “On my street, everyone is wearing masks when they are outside, when they go to the store. They joke about it, but people know, everyone is staying separated even outside.

“It’s harder when you live in a house together,” he added. “One guy I know, he stays in his room when he is home because he works landscaping and he is going to work still and says not everyone there wears masks.”

There have been concerns voiced by Latino community advocates that there is not broad understanding among Spanish-speaking residents of where testing is available, whether it is free and whether getting tested might count against the “public charge” considerations now being weighed in the consideration of immigration applications.

Many Latino community advocates have said that the message needs to be gotten across more clearly that emergency Medicaid should pay for testing of anyone who thinks they may be infected with the coronavirus if the spread of the COVID-19 disease is going to be halted.

Horror stories have emerged from other communities about undocumented immigrants dying at home because they were afraid that going to a hospital when they became seriously ill would expose them to immigration authorities. Locally, community leaders say, there is some of that same trepidation, if not with such disastrous results.

“Whether it is COVID-19 or anything else, that happens when you have people who are afraid,” said Oswaldo Palomo, a pastor from East Hampton. “It happens with domestic violence. It happens with going to the police. People are afraid of authority, and don’t want to get involved, so it is something we try to deal with.”

Mr. Palomo said that for the most part, however, he has seen the local immigrant community be trusting of official warnings and medical guidance.

“There’s always two sides of the story,” Mr. Palomo added. “One group who will say they don’t want to get tested, but another, like a family I know, the guy is very ill and is in the hospital and they have been doing great with him.”

Mr. Palomo said he knows of nobody from the East Hampton immigrant community that has died from COVID-19.

Minerva Perez, head of OLA of Eastern Long Island, a Latino advocacy group, said that it may even be surprising that the immigrant community has not be disproportionately impacted by the disease.

She said she has heard anecdotal information of immigrants choosing not to go to the hospital when sick and that food shortages for those out of work have been a major problem. OLA has been working with Suffolk County officials on organizing food-delivery efforts in Spanish-language communities to help compliance with stay-at-home orders whenever possible.

She also noted that the county’s choice of jobs deemed essential put many Latino workers in a tight spot. While grocery store employees certainly must play an important role, landscaping’s inclusion seemed an oddly unnecessary way of spreading risk.

“I’m not thrilled that trimming hedges is essential and those people who are out there still being employed are going to have higher risks because they have less ability to stay home,” she said. “But you hear a lot of scapegoating of Latinos — you know, fresh off their flights to Europe — for spreading the disease here, that is simply not true.”

Ms. Perez said that the epidemic has put in the spotlight the need to expand the Spanish-language translation of important public information and the extent to which services are available to anyone, regardless of immigration status.

OLA itself has been sharing information online and is producing a video to encourage Spanish-speaking residents to get COVID-19 tests if they are sick, and explaining how to do it easily at various testing sites.

While she said that normal channels of communication within the community like Facebook and Spanish-language websites and radio stations did a good job of spreading advice on social distancing, many official outlets lagged badly.

Some agencies have done better than others — the CDC has a particularly informative Spanish language section to its website, she said. Others were slow to capture the need for foreign language guidance: the state’s COVID-19 testing hotline did not even have an outgoing message in Spanish until weeks into the pandemic, she said.

“We need everything down to the town level to be in Spanish,” she advised. “If we want to get over this, it would behoove us to make sure that every single person has access to all the services and information that can help them. We need to keep people healthy, everyone, for all of our sake.”