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WATCH: Trump Warns Black Americans At Higher Risk From Coronavirus

   DailyWire.com
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to a Coronavirus Task Force news conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, April 7, 2020. Trump on Tuesday praised some of the countrys largest financial firms for pledging to take new steps to help small businesses disrupted by the coronavirus.
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

During Tuesday’s press conference, President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, brought attention to the fact that black Americans appear to be disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus.

“We are actively engaging on the problem of increased impacts – this is a real problem, and it’s showing up very strongly in our data on the African-American community – and we’re doing everything in our power to address this challenge, which is a tremendous challenge. It’s terrible,” Trump said during the briefing. “And provide support to African-American citizens of this country who are going through a lot, but it’s been disproportional.  They’re getting hit very very hard.”

As to why black Americans are at higher risk from the pandemic, President Trump invited Dr. Fauci to the podium, who explained that black Americans disproportionately suffer from other complications that make the coronavirus lethal.

“We have a particularly difficult problem of an exacerbation in health disparity,” Fauci began. “We’ve known literally forever that diseases like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and asthma are disproportionally affecting minority populations, particularly African-Americans.”

“Unfortunately, when you look at predisposing conditions that lead to a bad outcome with the coronavirus – the things that get people into ICUs, require intubation, and often lead to death – they are just those very comorbidities that are unfortunately disproportionately prevalent in the African-American population,” Fauci continued.  “So we’re very concerned about that, it’s very sad, there’s nothing we can do about it right now except to try and give them the best possible care to avoid those complications.”

“They are very nasty numbers, terrible numbers,” the president added.

The president and Fauci promised to provide more numbers on the black American deaths from the coronavirus. According to USA Today, those numbers have not been well-tracked by federal and state officials. The current data out of Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey and North Carolina show that black Americans are suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic most severely in those states. Here are how the numbers break down:

In Louisiana, one of the hardest hit states in the country, 70% of the deaths related to coronavirus were African American and 29% were white, according to the state’s health department. As of Monday, there were 14,867 cases across the state and 512 deaths. African Americans make up 32% of the state’s population.

In Illinois, for example, there were 12,262 coronavirus cases Monday and 307 deaths, according to the state’s Department of Public Health. Of the confirmed cases, 29.4% were black, 27.5% white, 9.4% Hispanic, 3.34% Asian and 24.4% were left blank. Of the deaths, 42% were black, 37.1% white, 7.5% Hispanic, 7% blank and 4.2% Asian. Roughly 15% of the state’s population is black, while whites make up 77% of the state, according to the Census. 

In Michigan, the numbers were also bleak, with African Americans accounting for just 14% of the state’s population, but 33% of COVID-19 cases and 41% of deaths.

Related: CNN’s Chris Cuomo: It’s ‘Bulls**t’ That Trump Wants To Give People Hope Amid Coronavirus

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