Doctors Are Concerned That Black Communities Might Not Be Getting Access To Coronavirus Tests

Nidhi Prakash, Buzzfeed News
March 22, 2020

Nidhi Prakash discusses the potential for implicit bias in doctors’ decisions over access to COVID-19 tests. The article follows a group of doctors in Virginia requesting that the CDC and WHO release information on the demographics of test access.

Finding out who’s had access to tests so far would mean “we’re able to correct our disparities or biases as health care providers,” said Dr. Leigh-Ann Webb, an emergency room doctor at UVA.

Hilton added that doctors have to rely on a lot of diagnostics that can be quite subjective to decide whether someone should get a test or not — feeling exhausted, having a sore throat — rather than measurable objective factors. That, she said, makes the whole process more vulnerable to the implicit biases that every patient and medical professional carry around with them.

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