The Covid-19 does not discriminate but the zip code influences … In New York City, the epicenter of the disease in the United States, one of the districts most affected by the coronavirus is that of Queens, where its inhabitants, according to data Health officials are four times more likely to test positive for Covid-19 than those in areas like Brooklyn.

The neighbourhoods of Corona, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights – all of them in Queens – seem to have become the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the pandemic.

Queens, with a population of 2.2 million, already has more than 34,000 contagions; while other areas, such as Manhattan (1.6 million) do not reach the 14,500 registered, according to data released by the New York State Department of Health.

Population composition

According to the New York newspaper, the reason for this situation is the population composition of the neighbourhood. Queens, one of the most racially diverse urban areas on the planet, is home to more Bangladeshis, Indians and Latinos than other areas of the capital. And 34% of the more than 10,000 coronavirus deaths in the entire city belong to this last group, although Hispanics only represent 29% of the city’s population.

“The pandemic has highlighted inequality within the city and has plagued working-class and immigrant neighbourhoods to a greater extent,” says the ‘NYT.’ Many of them, according to the newspaper, carry out jobs that cannot be done remotely – food distributors, taxi drivers, workers, cashiers and, according to Dave Chokshi, director of population health of the Health Corporation and Hospitals of the New York City, in central Queens, rates of diabetes, hypertension and other chronic diseases are significantly higher than the average for the rest of the city.

Furthermore, the recommended social distancing to stop the pandemic becomes more difficult in populous areas, where families live a few meters away, the apartments where they reside are smaller, the income ‘per capita’ is lower and the number of people under it ceiling is higher.

Speaking to ‘Time’ magazine, Dr. David Katz, executive director of the New York health center system, said that patients in western Queens “face a second problem”: they have half the hospital beds per head than, for example, Manhattan.

In the United States, positive cases exceed 587,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. In New York State, they exceed 100,000. All over the world, the figure is going towards two million infected.