STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The COVID-19 pandemic was soul-stifling, wreaking havoc across New York City and claiming the lives of more than 45,000 people in the five boroughs.
The New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, a housing survey conducted every three years by the United States Census Bureau, found the pandemic’s impact greatly exceeds the city’s death toll, echoing former research that found thousands of children lost a caregiver to the disease.
First reported by the New York Times, the survey of more than 7,000 New York City households found almost one in four New Yorkers lost at least one loved one to COVID-19 in the first 16 months of the pandemic. Nearly 900,000 people lost at least three people they said they were close to, including family and friends, according to the survey.
Those losses were magnified among essential workers, especially for people of color. Thirty percent of minority essential workers experienced the loss of at least one loved one, and 15% suffered three or more losses, said the survey, which is the first to capture representative data on how many New Yorkers lost loved ones to COVID-19.
“The loss of family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors from COVID-19 has left a permanent mark on our communities and our city,” read the survey. “The scale of this loss is profound, not only because New York City was the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. in the early days before treatments or vaccines but also because we are a global city.”
The World Health Organization last week officially called an end to the COVID-19 global health emergency; however, experts have said the pandemic will continue to cause cascading health and socioeconomic impacts.
A report released last year showed Black Americans suffered significantly higher rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death compared to their white counterparts, and warned that long COVID — persistent symptoms of the disease that are still not fully understood — could also…
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