‘It decimated our staff’: Covid ravages Black and brown health workers in US

Covid-19 has taken an outsized toll on Black and Hispanic Americans – and those disparities extend to medical workers

• Thousands of US healthcare workers have died fighting Covid-19

This spring, New Jersey emergency room nurse Maritza Beniquez saw “wave after wave” of sick patients, each wearing a look of fear that grew increasingly familiar as the weeks wore on.

Soon, it was her colleagues at Newark’s University Hospital – the nurses, techs and doctors with whom she had been working side-by-side–who turned up in the ER, themselves struggling to breath. “So many of our own coworkers got sick, especially toward the beginning, it literally decimated our staff,” she said.

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