Racial social inequalities in the mapping of COVID-19 in Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil

Desigualdades sócio-raciais da COVID-19 retratadas por cartografia em Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil

Resumo

Although the coronavirus has generated global impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected black populations in Maceió-AL, Brazil. A such negative impact is caused by the perpetuation of structural racism that maintains Afro descendants excluded from political, socioeconomic, and geographic spaces, conditioning them to a state of socioeconomic vulnerability. This paper seeks to shed light on the worsening of socio-racial inequalities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in northeastern the city of Maceió. Therefore, epidemiological data from COVID-19 and socioeconomic and census information were retrieved, calculated, analyzed, and spatialized using the QGIS software. The disease's mortality and lethality are accentuated in mostly black neighborhoods that lack infrastructure and basic public services, pointing to the need of developing broader and racially just public policies that are able to overcome historical socio-racial injustices and mitigate future pandemic negative scenarios falling over the shoulders of the same disfranchised communities.