A6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020Tracking an OutbreakInequities in America
THE HUMAN TOLLU.S. Deaths Pass 1,
In Day for 1st Time in July
The United States on Tuesday
recorded more than 1,000 coro-
navirus deaths in a single day for
the first time in July, according to
a New York Time database. Offi-
cials in Nevada, Oregon and
Tennessee reported their highest
single-day death figures yet.
Public health experts have
warned for weeks that deaths
would trail new cases by about a
month and case counts have risen
substantially since mid-June,
when states began lifting stay-at-
home orders and reopening busi-
nesses.
Tuesday’s number of deaths,
which were not fully counted at
press time, was far below the
single-day record of 2,752, re-
ported on April 15 during the peak
of the outbreak in New York and
the Northeast. But with the ex-
ception of two days in late June
when New Jersey and New York
reported large numbers of deaths
from unknown dates, Tuesday
was the first time since June 9
that more than 1,000 deaths were
announced in a day.
The seven-day average of
deaths in the United States
reached 786 on Monday, up from
an average of about 475 in early
July, though still far below the
country’s April peak.ONLINE LEARNINGJudge Refuses to Release
Teenager Over Homework
A judge on Monday denied a
motion to release a Michigan
teenager who has been held at a
juvenile detention facility since
May for not completing her online
coursework, the latest develop-
ment in a case that has raised a
national outcry.
Judge Mary Ellen Brennanof
the Oakland County Circuit Court
ruled that the teenager, who
violated the terms of her parole
by skipping coursework when her
school switched to remote learn-
ing because of the coronavirus
pandemic, should remain at the
juvenile facility. She said the
decision was for the girl’s own
good.
“I think you are exactly where
you are supposed to be,” Judge
Brennan told the 15-year-old
defendant, who is Black. “You are
blooming there, but there is more
work to be done.”ARIZONASigns of Improvement
In Western Hot Spot
Arizona is averaging more than
3,000 new cases a day this month,
double what it was in mid-June.
The state’s death toll is steadily
climbing to nearly 3,000. But
disease specialists are expressing
cautious optimism that the crisis
there may be leveling off or even
starting to ebb.
Cases in Arizona have been
decreasing there over the past 14
days, according to a New York
Times database.
And disease specialists are
pointing to several other indica-
tors that suggest some improve-
ment. Arizona reported 3,
hospitalizations on Monday of
people who either tested positive
for the virus or were believed to
be infected with it, a 14 percent
decline from a week earlier. The
number of virus patients there
who are on ventilators remains
high, but that too has been de-
creasing: The state reported 608
on Monday, down from a record
high of 687 on Thursday.
“We still could be getting a little
bit worse but we’re getting worse
slower,” said Dr. Joe Gerald, a
public health professor who does
coronavirus modeling at the
University of Arizona.NEW YORKCuomo Adds 10 States
To Quarantine List
New York, grappling with how to
prevent another large outbreak,
will now require travelers from a
total of 31 states to quarantine for
14 days, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo
said Tuesday.
The weekly update saw Minne-
sota taken off the list and the
addition of 10 states: Alaska,
Delaware, Indiana, Maryland,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska,
North Dakota, Virginia and Wash-
ington.
New Jersey and Connecticut
are also asking travelers from
those states to quarantine.Around the U.S.
And the Region
HOUSTON — The starkly di-
vergent ways in which the coro-
navirus has affected neighboring
communities in the Houston area
— one rich and one poor — under-
score how it is a magnifier of ineq-
uities.
To see how the virus can largely
spare one neighborhood but up-
end one next door, look at Bellaire,
with its tidy yards and spacious
homes, and Gulfton, where apart-
ment blocks pack residents in
tight.
“We’re last in voter turnout,
we’re last in census participation,
but we’re first in Covid,” Edward
Pollard, 35, a first-term council-
man, said ruefully as he walked
through his Gulfton district hand-
ing out free masks at tire shops
and hair salons on a recent Sun-
day this month.
“Máscaras! Gratis!” an aide
called out in Spanish, or “Masks!
Free!”
“How much?” one tire shop
worker replied, skeptically.
“Gratis!” Mr. Pollard replied.
The man took a bag of 10.
In the Houston neighborhood of
Gulfton, more than 45,000 restau-
rant workers and housekeepers,
immigrants and refugees live
close together, mostly in shade-
less two-story apartment blocks.
At least 965 people have been in-
fected by the virus in the ZIP code
that covers the area, far more per
capita than the city as a whole; 12
people have died.
The independent town of Bel-
laire, by contrast, feels suburban
and is home to mostly white and
Asian professionals, many with
advanced degrees. In the 19,000-
person community, there have
been 67 cases, about a third of the
per capita rate for Houston.
Juan Manuel Muñoz Soto lived
with his family on the Gulfton side
in a ground-floor apartment. Two
adults and four children between
the ages of 6 and 19 crammed into
one bedroom. The family moved
there in haste, after feeling unsafe
in its previous apartment.
Mr. Muñoz, 64, worried about
catching the virus, but he had to
keep showing up to his job as a
cleaner at a cancer hospital. He
planned to retire this summer.
Then he got sick. Fever. Cough.
Mr. Muñoz worsened and tried for
days to get admitted to a hospital.
He struggled to breathe. By early
May, he was hospitalized with
Covid-19.
“After he went to the hospital, I
wasn’t able to sleep,” said his part-
ner, a 43-year-old from Guatemala
who requested anonymity be-
cause she and her four children
were undocumented.
Then she got sick. She isolated
herself. “I couldn’t talk,” she re-
called, describing a low point in
her battle with the virus. Two of
her children also became ill. Over
time, they all got better.
But Mr. Muñoz did not. He died
on June 13.
The grief was immediately
compounded by economic uncer-
tainty. She worked only part-time
at a laundry — not enough to sur-
vive on. “At times, I wake up at
night thinking, ‘What am I going
to do, my God,’ ” she said in Span-
ish. “It is very difficult. I pray a lot
to God to give me strength.”
On the Bellaire side, fears have
been more abstract. None of the
town’s residents have died of the
virus, even as 344,000 people in
Texas have been infected and
more than 4,100 people have died.
They discuss the risks and lat-
est trends remotely, in Zoom calls
or unfurling conversations on
Nextdoor, a social media site,
sharing articles from top area doc-
tors or studying official coro-
navirus data on the county’s web-
site.
“For all of our residents, it’s
likely the case that their neigh-
bors are health care profession-
als,” said Andrew S. Friedberg,
the Bellaire mayor. “That has fos-
tered more of an anecdotal discus-
sion” about the virus and a “high
rate of compliance” with state and
county rules about social distanc-
ing and masks.
The town had among the high-
est levels of residents with health
insurance in Harris County, ac-
cording to a recent county health
department study, and a low rate
of those delaying care. In Gulfton,
by contrast, roughly 40 percent of
residents had no health insurance.
The same survey showed that
about one in 10 residents did not
have a car in a city designed for
driving.
“This virus is an equal opportu-
nity abuser, that’s true whether
you’re talking about Bellaire or
the Gulfton area,” Sylvester
Turner, the Houston mayor, said in
an interview outside of a food dis-
tribution event at a nearby
church. “But the resources people
have to combat it are different.
The infrastructure is lacking
when it comes to communities of
color.”
And Mr. Turner said the number
of positive cases in Gulfton was al-
most certainly higher than the of-
ficial count because so many resi-
dents are undocumented and
fearful of showing up to get tested.
“When you distrust, you stay
away,” he said.Yet even in the most protected
spaces, the virus finds a way to
spread. In the Bellaire mayor’s
case, it was through his daugh-
ter’s gymnastics class, where an-
other parent tested positive. Mr.
Friedberg quarantined to be safe.
But unlike many of his neigh-
bors in the Gulfton area, Mr.
Friedberg could work from home,
as could many of his constituents.
Some decamped to second homes.
As the outbreak worsened,
fewer ventured to Evelyn’s Park,
in Bellaire, even on a relatively
cool Sunday morning.“Even this park, it has less peo-
ple than two weeks ago,” said
Sheng Zhang, a professor study-
ing neurodegenerative diseases
at the University of Texas Health
Science Center at Houston, who
biked from his Bellaire home with
his 9-year-old daughter and a
friend.
The small park, with its outdoor
cafe and patches of artfully tall
grass, attracts visitors from
around Houston to lounge, jog or
toss a baseball — an oil financier
with his 2-year-old daughter; a
pastor on a “staycation” with hiswife and dog.
A short drive away, the main
green space in Gulfton, Burnett
Bayland Park, brought out a smat-
tering of residents that same Sun-
day morning, but few visitors
from far-flung areas of the city,
apart from teenagers in the skate
park.
Two men sat talking on a bench
under the shade of a basketball
pavilion near an overgrown soc-
cer field.
“There’s no work,” Ebenilson
Jurado Rodriguez, 44, a land-
scaper, said in Spanish.
“There’s no work,” his friend
echoed.
They lamented that, until very
recently, many of their neighbors
did not realize the importance of
putting on a mask. Still, neither
man wore one.
“I know some people who got
it,” Fernando Romero, 30, said of
the virus as he ate a breakfast
quesadilla at a table nearby. “But
I’m not worried about it. I think
that they don’t keep the social dis-
tance, they go out with their
friends.”
Mr. Romero worked in a bar un-
til a surge of cases among young
Texans forced Gov. Greg Abbott to
order all bars to close indefinitely.
“I’m OK right now,” he said. “We’ll
see what happens.”
Much about Gulfton resembles
the diversity of the neighborhoods
in Queens that formed the center
of New York City’s outbreak in the
spring. Groceries cater to immi-
grants from India or Afghanistan
or Tanzania. A centrally located
Fiesta superstore attracts a
steady flow of Hispanic shoppers
who arrive by car or on foot.
“Everybody wants to buy
masks,” Bilda Vasquez, the owner
of the small clothing shop nestled
outside the Fiesta, said through a
floral mask.
The best sellers were the black
masks. “For work,” she said. “Ev-
erybody wants to protect their
life. People are more worried,
more scared.”
Those with jobs are anxious to
keep them, even if they begin feel-
ing sick, said Sandra Rodriguez, a
Gulfton native and community
leader. “People can’t afford to stay
home,” she said. “You say, ‘If
you’re sick, stay home.’ Well, they
say, ‘I can’t afford it, so I’m going
to go to work sick.’ ”
Yet for many, the trouble has not
been keeping a job, but finding an-
other one after a sudden restau-
rant closing or office shutdown.
At an African market in another
part of the neighborhood, Anaclet
Rukata said that he had friends
who had become ill, but that he
worried less about the virus than
about his uncertain future.
A 39-year-old refugee from Bu-
rundi, he lost his job with a ca-
tering company in the Chevron
headquarters when the pandemic
caused the first wave of closures.
His 55-year-old mother, also a ref-
ugee, lost her job too, he said.
That day, he was working be-
hind the counter as a favor to a
friend who owns the market. “He
doesn’t make enough money to
pay me,” Mr. Rukata said.
And he had just received word
by email that his unemployment
benefits would be cut off at the end
of the month.
“I was reading the email,” he
said, “and thinking — what’s
next?”INFECTIONS IN HOUSTON
Two Neighborhoods: One Rich, One Poor. One Spared.
By J. DAVID GOODMANResidents in spacious homes
in Bellaire, Texas, above, have
avoided the virus. But it has
spread in Gulfton, where peo-
ple are packed into apart-
ments.PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL STARGHILL JR. FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES“We’re last in voter turnout, we’re last in census participation, but we’re first in Covid,”
said Edward Pollard, a Houston councilman who represents Gulfton.In Gulfton, population 45,000, at least 965 people have been infected and 12 have
died. Bellaire, with a population of 19,000, has seen just 67 cases and no deaths.“Everybody wants to buy masks,” said Bilda Vasquez, who owns a small clothing shop
in Gulfton. “Everybody wants to protect their life. People are more worried.”Gulfton’s cases exceed
the per capita total;
nearby Bellaire has
seen just a fraction.