“I feel a lot of anxiety about the city reopening just because there’s still so much that we don’t know about this virus,” said Martinez Zepeda, a research specialist with the Community Engagement and Health Equity Office at the University of Illinois Cancer Center. “And just from what my family has been through, I’m still very concerned that my parents, their health will continue to be compromised and high risk.”

With similar concerns in mind, a group of Latino elected officials, activists and doctors are calling on Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to take a series of further steps to increase testing, communication and financial support for Latinos during the pandemic.

“I am absolutely concerned about the reopening,” said Dr. Pamela Vergara-Rodriguez, who specializes in internal medicine, psychiatry and addiction medicine at the Cook County Health and Hospitals System. “I just don’t see how we can reopen in Chicago if our black and brown communities don’t have the virus under better control.

Her comments came just days before the city moved to its “cautiously reopening” third phase on Wednesday, a decision Lightfoot kept in place even amid the fallout from George Floyd’s death in Minnesota with a police officer’s knee on his neck. Crowds have assembled for peaceful protests — as well as looting and acts of vandalism — across the Chicago area in recent days, giving rise to concerns about another surge in COVID-19 cases.

“With our move to phase three and our public health team, we’re fully aware of the risk of an uptick and a surge in cases,” Lightfoot said when announcing her decision to proceed. “We have to be cautious and we have to be careful.”

Restaurants, hotels and many other businesses, such as salons and barbershops, started reopening Wednesday with reduced capacities and tight rules in place designed to stop COVID-19 cases from spiking.

The governor and mayor point to a series of steps they have already taken to address the disparate impact of COVID-19 on Latinos. They include expanded testing, stepped up communication, Medicaid eligibility for undocumented immigrants and hotel lodging for isolation and quarantine.

Members of the Illinois Latino COVID-19 Initiative said they appreciate what has been done but believe the continued high rates of infection among Latinos require an even more robust effort.

Higher rates, younger fatalities

Vergara-Rodriguez is part of the Illinois Latino COVID-19 Initiative, a group working to highlight and address the health inequities that have contributed to the rapid spread of the disease among Latinos. Citing data from the Illinois Department of Public Health, the group notes that nearly 1.8% of the state’s Latino residents have tested positive for the coronavirus, a relatively high rate compared with about 1.1% of African Americans, less than 1% for the state as a whole and 0.3% among the white, non-Hispanic population.

The true numbers may be even more alarming, because state data on the ethnicity and race of people being tested is incomplete. If the ethnicity and race of everyone tested were known, the Latino infection rates could be even higher, Initiative members said.

Testing facilities, hospitals and coroners are supposed to report all confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths to the state using a multi-page form that doesn’t always get filled out completely — either because patients are reluctant to share some information, including race and ethnicity, or because medical personnel are too pressed amid their pandemic workloads.

Other statistics indicate that COVID-19 deaths among area Latinos are skewing younger.

About 29% of Latinos in Cook County who died of the disease as of Wednesday were between 30 to 59 years old, according to data from the medical examiner’s office analyzed by the Tribune; for non-Latinos, the figure was 12%. The median age among Latino COVID-19 deaths was 67, compared with 77 for non-Latino fatalities, the data shows.

State public health data also indicates that Latinos under the age of 60 have been infected at higher rates than other demographic groups — and elderly Latinos at lower rates.

Experts say reasons for these statistics include that many Latinos live in multi-generational households with limited space; many work in so-called essential businesses like factories, meatpacking plants and deep-cleaning services where they have a higher likelihood of being exposed; and many lack the financial wherewithal to isolate themselves as needed.

There’s also a lack of health insurance, particularly among the population living in the country without documentation.

A spokesman for Pritzker highlighted steps the governor has taken to address the disparate effects of the disease in the Latino community. They include more testing in Latino areas, making translators available at drive-thru testing sites and removal of questions about immigration status at Federally Qualified Health Centers that are doing testing. The governor also has expanded Medicaid to cover undocumented immigrants so COVID-19 care can be provided at no cost to them and has offered free hotel lodging to people who are isolating or quarantining themselves.

“The administration is also working alongside the Illinois Attorney General’s Workplace Rights Bureau, the Illinois Department of Labor, and the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate and enforce guidelines that protect the safety and well-being of residents as they return to work,” deputy press secretary Jose Sanchez Molina wrote in an email.

“The existing disparities highlight decades of institutional inequities and obstacles for our Latino communities, which are now being amplified during this global pandemic in Illinois and across our nation,” Molina wrote. “The administration has placed equity at the core of its public health response to COVID-19 in order to address the specific challenges and needs of the communities who are most vulnerable.”

A spokesman for the Chicago Public Health Department said the city’s data shows a decline over the past month or so in Latino positivity rates in Chicago. In early April, more than 70% of Latinos tested were positive; with far more testing now available, the rate has dropped below 33%, Andrew Buchanan said in an email.

However, that percentage is still double the city’s overall positivity rate of less than 15%, according to data cited during the mayor’s “cautious reopening” announcement.

“The health and well-being of all Chicagoans, regardless of racial and ethnic background or immigration status, is the top priority of the Lightfoot administration during these unsettling times and beyond,” a spokeswoman for Lightfoot said in a statement. She also pointed to efforts at essential worker outreach, virtual town halls held for the Latino community, expanded partnerships with Latino neighborhood organizations and the provision of city-funded hotel rooms for people to isolate and quarantine.

A long road to recovery

Initiative members said further efforts they would like to see include better reporting of race and ethnicity; even more testing, conducted with cultural sensitivity that avoids questions about immigration status; broader contact tracing done by people from the community; and more financial and other resources for Latinos who may not have the independent wherewithal to isolate if they are sick or quarantine if they have been exposed.

“This is the next phase of the crisis, and it’s staring us in the face, and we need to have a comprehensive, proactive plan to address it and deal with it,” said Sylvia Puente, executive director of the Latino Policy Forum, which has been crunching data on behalf of the Initiative.

“The message isn’t necessarily that we’re not ready to reopen,” added Dr. Marina Del Rios, an emergency room physician at University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago. “But rather, as we reopen, we need to consider the fact that there are communities that are impacted very differently.”

Esther Corpuz, CEO of Alivio Medical Center, which has Pilsen and Berwyn locations, said the positivity rate at her clinics, which serve an overwhelmingly Latino clientele, is running around 45%.