A study led by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases has found that, over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, back people were likely to be hospitalized at a younger age, less likely to have access to intensive care units and ventilators, and had higher mortality from Covid-19 than White residents. Bloomberg reports that, highlighting the unequal nature of South African society, people treated in the Eastern Cape, the country’s poorest province, were 1.9 times more likely to die than those in the Western Cape, which has more private hospitals and better government services. On average, Black South Africans admitted to hospital with the coronavirus were 1.3 times more likely to die than White people, while those of Coloured or Indian descent had a 1.2 times greater chance of dying.
