Why are African Americans disproportionately suffering from COVID-19? In principle, we are all equal before pandemics, but in practice, COVID-19 is hitting some people much harder than others. An abundance of research out of the US in recent weeks shows that COVID-19 is ravaging African American – and to a lesser extent Latino – communities at disproportionately high rates. Not only are African-Americans more likely to contract the disease, they're also more likely to die from it. In Louisiana, a coronavirus hotspot, some 70 percent of virus-related deaths were among African Americans, although they make up just 32 percent of the population. In Michigan, blacks are 133 percent more likely to be infected by the disease. Similar stories are emerging in New York, where the COVID-19 death rate for Black and Latino New Yorkers is around twice that of whites. Why? Many health experts attribute this to long-existing structural inequalities in health and healthcare that put African American communities at higher risk of falling seriously ill from the disease. Black Americans are also more likely to live in densely populated urban areas, while immigrants from Latin America sometimes live in inter-generational homes, complicating efforts to socially distance. But another huge – and often overlooked – factor contributing to this gap is that Black and Latino Americans make-up a much bigger part of the COVID-19 essential workforce, working as food service workers, cleaners, and public transport operators. Home quarantine and work from home arrangements are a luxury that many of them don't have, resulting in their over-exposure to the deadly virus.