Las Vegas Councilwoman Olivia Diaz speaks to the media about how COVID-19 is impacting the Latino community, at the Southern Nevada Health District office in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May 13, 2020.
Published Wednesday, May 13, 2020 | 7 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, May 13, 2020 | 9:30 p.m.
As more COVID-19 tests become available in the community, the Southern Nevada Health District is paying attention to another demographic trend: Latinos in the region represent the most COVID-19 cases in Clark County.
As of Wednesday, 27.23% of people here who tested positive for the disease were Latino. The trend concerns Las Vegas Councilwoman Olivia Diaz, whose Ward 3 has a high Latino population. She and several other elected officials along with the health district held a news conference Wednesday in English and Spanish to inform the Latino community and the public at large about the trend and the ongoing threat of coronavirus.
“That’s something that makes me nervous, because one, we know it’s highly contagious, but as a Latina, we live in multigenerational households and sometimes multifamily households,” Diaz said. “That is of even greater concern and that’s why we want to make sure our community is informed.”
Officials urged everyone to continue practicing social distancing, wearing masks in public and avoiding contact with people outside their household as much as possible to slow the spread of COVID-19. Even though some businesses are slowly reopening, new COVID-19 cases continue to be reported, with 5,045 people in Clark County having tested positive for the disease since the pandemic began.
“This is not a time to be nonchalant,” said Dr. Luis Medina-Garcia, infectious disease expert at University Medical Center.
In addition to cultural factors, such as families living in close contact, as well as high rates of poverty, the Latino community often faces barriers to health care and might not always seek medical care when they need it, Medina-Garcia said.
“That sometimes can result in unfortunate consequences,” Medina-Garcia said.
With the health district having ramped up targeted, free community testing even for those without COVID-19 symptoms, officials urged those who could have been exposed to COVID-19 or have any symptoms to seek testing and, if necessary, care.
There has also been an effort to bring testing closer to targeted communities. On Thursday, for example, the Mexican Consulate will have free, by-appointment testing, Diaz said.
While black and Asian people in Southern Nevada appear to be dying at disproportionately high rates from COVID-19, the Latino community in the region has fortunately not seen that same disparity. The trend has surprised health officials given that Latinos in some other cities appear to be dying at higher rates.
“That’s something that has to be examined,” said Maria Azzarelli, manager of the health district’s Office of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. “Is our Hispanic population somehow different than Hispanic populations around the United States? We’re not sure.”
The reason probably has to do with the age of the Latino population here more than anything else, said Dr. Fermin Leguen, acting chief health officer of the health district.
“One of the elements of the Hispanic population, it’s not that they’re more resistant to the disease, it’s just specifically that it’s a younger population,” Leguen said.
As the health district tries to increase its contact tracing, one challenge it faces with Hispanic populations is having enough staff who can help with the process, Leguen said. The goal of contact tracing is to identify and reach out to individuals who might have come in contact with an infected person to stop the chain of infection and transmission.
In certain cases, the health district relies on translators, rather than staff who speak Spanish or other languages that are not English, to conduct contact tracing, Leguen said. It’s not ideal, but it is what officials are able to do at this time, he said.
“When you use a translation service, you lose part of the rapport that you establish with the patient,” he said. “But that’s unfortunately the only option when we’re unable to match the volume of cases with the ability of speaking Spanish in the group, and the same happens if it’s, let’s say, Filipino, or Chinese.”
