Dr. Maulana Karenga, chair of the Department of Africana Studies at CSU Long Beach, wants the Black community to make sure that physical distancing during the pandemic does not interfere with relationships or establishing networks.

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has called for the Centers for Disease Control to collect and report racial data for COVID-19.

However, Black people accounted for a disproportionate 17 percent of the deaths while making up only 9 percent of the county’s population.

Johnson later sent an email reiterating the “deep-seated racial inequities embedded in everything from healthcare to the economy are compounding the effects of the coronavirus pandemic for Black, Brown, Asian and indigenous communities.”

An important challenge is transparency in the reporting of data on how this pandemic is impacting communities and ethnic groups in Los Angeles County.