“We noticed in the first week here,” he said.
"It was very clear right from the get-go of the epidemic that there is a disproportionate impact that is occurring here … on communities of color and amongst vulnerable occupational categories."
Snehal Patel, Dell Medical School
Patel, who has been gathering intake data from Dell Seton Medical Center, said nine of the first 10 COVID patients who came in were Latino.
In the first three months, he said, a whopping 78% of Dell Seton’s COVID patients were Latino. The majority spoke Spanish as their primary language. And when broken down by occupation, most worked in construction, maintenance or other frontline jobs.