STEVE GOLDSTEIN: As you heard this hour on The show, Arizona continues to be one of the world's hot spots for COVID-19 cases. A considerable amount of that is being driven by people between the ages of 20 and 44. The state's Hispanic community is also being hammered by the virus, with Maricopa County numbers showing nearly 50% of coronavirus cases and 40% of hospitalizations are occurring among Hispanics. Earlier, I spoke with Dr. Omar Gonzalez of Dignity Health to find out why.
OMAR GONZALEZ: Just to touch a little bit about the Hispanic population, the Hispanic population, traditionally, or this could be attributed to multifactorial cases. The family unit in Hispanic groups, including myself, we are multigenerational. It's not uncommon to have in a family unit young children, adolescents, young adults, adults and older people. The behavioral pattern as well is a little bit different of how families interact with each other. Other possible reasons why we're seeing these increment as well is the language barrier. [It] is true that in Arizona we have a lot of outlets in Spanish, whether it's by social media or TV stations, but it's not as wide as we can see in the English language. The lack of resources in that makes [it] difficult to disseminate information as well. And also disparities in access to health care could be one of the other reasons why we're seeing larger increment in the Hispanic population.
GOLDSTEIN: We have heard with the younger age group, that 20 to 44, that maybe not enough — especially in the lower end of that range — maybe not enough are practicing social distancing, maybe not wearing masks as well. Have you found that to be the case? And does any of that apply to, to those in the Hispanic community as well?
GONZALEZ: Definitely younger population, which are considered healthier individuals, should understand that they are not immune to this virus. When you're young, you may feel [invulnerable] to the infection, but in reality, you are not. So you can get infected. So we have to go back to basics. Whether you're young, whether you're Hispanic, we need to get back to basics to mitigate the spreading of this infection. When I mean getting back to basics, means social distancing, hand hygiene and wearing the universal mask. Those three points are so important to mitigate the spread of the infection. And if we diminish the number of cases in our community, we definitely will diminish the number of cases in our hospitals. We will diminish our fatality cases as well.
GOLDSTEIN: Certainly many of us are taking all of this seriously, but do you think as a whole, the communities are taking it seriously? Realizing it is an illness, but have people taken the power of the virus seriously enough, do you think?
GONZALEZ: Our community needs to understand that we do have in our population vulnerable people. What I mean with vulnerable people are people who have other diseases like diabetes, hypertension, etc. or are older age. The group that are more vulnerable are the ones who will have a fatal outcome. So we do not take seriously this infection or transmission because you think that you will be fine, these are big mistakes, because even younger patients as well, we can see them from time to time in the ICU with fatal outcomes. So these infections affect all ages. Is true that younger may have better chances of survival, have better outcomes. But it's also true that we are affecting a big group within our community. The mortality rate can be as high as, you know, it's been in Arizona.
GOLDSTEIN: So now that we have heard more about people wearing masks, even as you said, perhaps there has been a barrier in terms of information in some aspects of the Hispanic community, do you think we will see a shift over the next week or two as more people generally in the community are wearing masks?
GONZALEZ: I hope so. We are really working really hard, not only from the hospital side, but also trying to disseminate more information in the social media. It's very important that our authorities and every health care worker that currently are seeing patients on a day-to-day basis, express themselves, educate our community. I do believe and I hope and I have hope in our community that we will come together, because if we don't, there's no point. I mean, we have to take responsibility for our actions. And as the citizens, we have to do this. And doing this, we will see a diminish on the number of cases.
GOLDSTEIN: That is Dr. Omar Gonzalez, an epidemiologist with Dignity Health.
