Michigan reports a disproportionate amount of COVID-19 cases and deaths among Black people. But state-level data does not reveal the ways COVID-19 is impacting local communities. To track this, @COVID19Tracking has followed a few cities since end of May. covidtracking.com/blog/state-lev…
Tracking city-level data allows us to see that 48% of Black people who have died from COVID-19 in Michigan are from Detroit. But the decisions that individual jurisdictions make can obscure the scale of this impact.
Wayne County is Michigan’s most populous county. Its data for August 5 shows 13% of the state’s deaths among Black people came from Wayne County. But the county’s data excludes Detroit, which represents 38% of the county’s population.
When we add Detroit back into the equation, it reveals that 60% of Michigan’s COVID-19 deaths among Black people happened in Wayne County. The current reporting system obscures the true impact of COVID-19 within the county, and on the state’s Black population.
Additional Detroit and Wayne County analysis, and the data used, is available in this thoughtfully crafted post by @nickicamberg, @aarushisahejpal, and @cat_pollack: covidtracking.com/blog/state-lev…
Localized analysis will continue to be key in identifying which communities are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. We plan to release our dataset spanning 64 major metro areas in the near future. It will include ZIP code-level data, along with race and ethnicity data.
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