The uneven impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on New York City residents has been reported extensively. A look at the data reveals just how extreme the disparities are. Disparities are seen along geographic boundaries because of racial and economic segregation and structural racism in NYC.
Deaths Per 100,000 People
Mortality per 100,000 people provides a truer picture of the IMPACT of the pandemic on different neighborhoods and racial demographic groups. This is more useful for comparing impact than total deaths.
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A key insight that emerged while we were developing the map visualization is the correlation between median income and the Covid-19 death rate. While this data is a bit noisy, it is clear that poor or low income neighborhoods suffered the greatest loss of life from COVID-19 and very high income neighborhoods suffered the least from the pandemic.
Poverty is a magnifier of misery and death of an order of magnitude that is striking. Let’s do the math:
The hardest hit zip code suffered 28 TIMES the death rate is the least impacted zip code while having a median income barely more than 1/10 the median income of the least impacted zip code.
Local government institutions must focus on combatting the structural racism and other inequities that make a virus like COVID-19 a heat seeking missile set on doing the greatest damage in poverty hot spots. Local and federal government agencies must take a protective stance toward vulnerable communities.
Our interactive map visualizes the up-to-date total coronavirus deaths in each New York City zip code in addition to the population impact of the virus by zip code.
Beginning with the earliest available data (May 18, 2020) when the office of then Mayor DiBlasio finally began to release zip code specific data, this visualization reveals the disparate impact of COVID-19 on NYC residents within the 302.64 sq mile area of New York City’s five boroughs.
The data sources include NYC Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Data beginning on May 18, 2020.
Structural racism, structural inequalities and historical discrimination enforced through law and custom from the federal to the state and neighborhood level are at the root of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minorities.
Browse this article by Kaiser Family Foundation to learn more.
Data on several measures of social wellbeing including economic security/poverty, air quality, educational opportunities, residential quality, chronic health issues, access to quality healthcare etc reveal tangible disparities between different economic and racial groups.
NYC Essential Public Health Data Resource
Several datasets made publicly available by New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) reveal the persistence of structural racism in New York City. This online resource provides public access to the data AND ways to explore and visualize the data to derive a deeper understanding of the consequences of NYC’s segregation by race and wealth.
The data and website provided by NYC DOHMH are essential companions to the COVID-19 Impact Project NYC COVID-91 Mortality Map.
NYC DOHMH Useful Links
Click on the links below to explore the NYC DOHMH data. 
This takes you outside of the COVID-19 Impact Project website.
New York City is one of the top ten most racially segregated cities in the United States.
(Reference/Caption): Most to Least Segregated Cities in 2020
According to 2020 Census Data
UC Berkley © 2023 Othering and Belonging Institute. All rights reserved.
Enforced in the boundaries of this geographical racial segregation is a historical disparity in the determinants of social wellbeing. These disparities include job security, food security, access to equitable healthcare, air quality, economic security, fair and equitable housing, educational achievement etc.
For all measures of social well being, racial and ethnic minorities – particularly Black, LatinX, Indigenous and Asian Pacific Islander groups lag behind White Americans.
The COVID-19 Impact Project is intentional about explicitly framing conversations on disparities in health outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities through the lens of structural racism AND AVOID the historical tendency to blame individuals and/or ascribe biological rationales for these disparities.
Users of this resource can compare and contrast NYC neighborhoods divided according to community districts. The measures of social wellbeing are the following:
Battery Park City on the southwestern tip of Manhattan with a median income of $250K in 2021 inflation adjusted dollars has largely been spared from COVID-19 deaths with a death rate of approximately 53 residents per 100K. Close to the financial center of NYC, Battery Park is a park filled high income neighborhood along the Hudson River with views of New Jersey and Brooklyn.
