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New COVID-19 Data Shows Disproportionate Number Of Black Deaths In 9 of 11 Parishes

A discarded face mask lies on the ground outside Ochsner Baptist Medical Center in New Orleans. March 25, 2020.
Patrick Madden
/
WWNO
A discarded face mask lies on the ground outside Ochsner Baptist Medical Center in New Orleans. March 25, 2020.

The latest addition to the Louisiana Department of Health's publicly availably COVID-19 data is a breakdown of deaths by race in 11 of the state's 64 parishes.

The tables also provide the exact known population of each listed race in each parish.

A New Orleans Public Radio analysis of the data shows the percent of black people who have died of COVID-19 is higher than the percent of the population black people make up in nine of the 11 parishes for which data was provided. (The department only provided the data for parishes where 25 or more people died.)

Here's a look at the breakdown in Orleans Parish, where the most people (344) have died.

And here's a look at those numbers out of Jefferson Parish, where the second highest number of people (288) have died.

Black people are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in both parishes, and that's also true in seven of the other parishes for which this data was provided. 

In the other two parishes, white people have been disproportionately affected.

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Ashley Dean is the digital news editor for New Orleans Public Radio. Before coming to New Orleans, she was the editor of Denverite, a digital news startup now under the Colorado Public Radio umbrella. Prior to that she was a copy editor and features writer at the Denver Post, and before that, a music reporter for the Colorado Daily. She graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in journalism and from Northeastern University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.