Ethno-racial disparities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, by the nature of this crisis and its primarily sanitary, medical and biological management, offers an exceptional opportunity for observations on the scientific debates surrounding the notion of “race”, used and conceptualised at times as a biological reality, at others as a social construct. Based on a synthetic reading of a variety of scientific productions –in medicine, public health, epidemiology, and social sciences– discussing ethno-racial disparities in COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality, this article shows that these two models of interpretation –biological/genetic and socio-economic/socio-demographic– do not stand in opposition to each other: the relationships between race and identified risk factors in COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality, as recognised by researchers are often conjointly conditioned by both biological mechanisms and socio-economic factors. Furthermore, the intersectional approach –articulating various social relations of race, class, gender, age, disability, etc.– proves to be particularly fruitful in grasping the ethno-racial disparities in COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality.