As of 4/14/20, the Top Fastest growing Illinois Zip Codes reporting new COVID-19 cases shifted disproportionately to Latino populations based on the ethnic racial makeup of those Zip Codes. The CDC needs to immediately begin releasing detailed data on actual confirmed Coronavirus positive cases and deaths by Zip Code to help effectively target emerging hot pockets. There remains no available data reporting death’s by zip code impacting the Latino community.
Of the 710,648 people that live in the top 10 Zip Codes (2014 Census estimates from https://zipdatamaps.com/), the racial break down of these combined communities is as follows:
| Racial Group | 2014 Population | % of Population |
| White | 159,870 | 22% |
| Black or African American | 76,323 | 11% |
| Hispanic / Latino | 428,169 | 60% |
| All Others | 46,286 | 7% |
| All Groups Top 10 Zip Codes | 710,648 |
This new data suggests that Mayor Lightfoot’s campaign targeting African American and other communities has been highly effective at slowing growth rates in many majority African American and other neighborhoods where English is broadly spoken. The growth rates in majority Latino neighborhoods suggests similar outreach efforts and analysis is needed targeting Latino neighborhoods where the virus is growing at the highest rates across Illinois.
Yesterday, a coalition of Latino leaders issued a press release calling on such a well needed outreach campaign to address the unique cultural and language needs of the Latino communities.
Other observed trends from yesterday’s data is the emergence of University Village into the top position for fastest growing Zip Code statewide at an alarming rate of 27% daily growth over the most recent 2 day period. We speculate that this may be a result of UIC and possibly the increase in availability of rapid testing in that zip code.
[visualizer id=”7708″]