Authored by Dr. Rebekah Rollston and Sandro Galea
Part of this developing crisis is very well known: On December 31, 2019, Chinese officials reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan and identified the novel coronavirus as the causative agent on January 7, 2020. This novel coronavirus spread rapidly, and on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. To date, there are more than 1 million confirmed cases in the United States and 3.5 million worldwide.
Through this all the virus has terrified the world, in no small part because of a sense that we are all at risk, that the virus is non-discriminating, and we can all get sick. That is true, but it is also not the complete truth. Once again, as with all other health conditions, those who are most at risk are those who are already vulnerable by way of the social and economic disadvantage that characterize their lives.
Read the full piece on Harvard Medical School Primary Care Blog.