Singer Elizabeth K, Molyneux Kevin, Kaur Khushmit, Kona Niathi, Malave Gabriel Santos, Baranowski Kim A
Department of Emergency Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY, 10029, USA.
Department of Medical Education, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY, 10029, USA.
SSM Qual Res Health. 2022 Dec;2:100072. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmqr.2022.100072. Epub 2022 Mar 23.
COVID-19 disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minority groups as well as people in jails and immigration detention centers in the United States. Between April and August of 2020, the mean monthly COVID-19 case ratio for ICE detainees was 13.4 times that of the general U.S. population. This study aims to understand the experiences of detained asylum seekers during the pandemic and to provide insight into COVID-19's impact on this population's health. This qualitative study employed first-person, in-depth narratives obtained from 12 asylum seekers, all of whom were detained in immigration detention centers or prisons during the initial surge of the COVID-19 pandemic and were subsequently released. Detained asylum seekers reported inadequate medical care, obstacles to receiving care, an inability to social distance, poor hygiene, restricted movement, and a lack of infection control-- all which increased their risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 and exacerbated health inequalities brought to the forefront by the pandemic. Advocating for improved disease prevention and screening, prompt access to health care and treatment, cohorting of infectious cases, and community alternatives to detention to decrease the detained immigrant population sizes are crucial to halt communicability of the virus and its subsequent morbidity and mortality in this vulnerable population.
新冠病毒对美国的少数族裔群体以及监狱和移民拘留中心的人员影响尤为严重。在2020年4月至8月期间，移民和海关执法局（ICE）被拘留者的新冠病毒月平均病例比率是美国普通人群的13.4倍。本研究旨在了解被拘留的寻求庇护者在疫情期间的经历，并深入了解新冠病毒对这一人群健康的影响。这项定性研究采用了从12名寻求庇护者那里获得的第一人称深度叙述，他们在新冠疫情初期激增期间均被拘留在移民拘留中心或监狱，随后获释。被拘留的寻求庇护者报告称医疗护理不足、获得护理存在障碍、无法保持社交距离、卫生条件差、行动受限以及缺乏感染控制——所有这些都增加了他们感染和传播新冠病毒的风险，并加剧了疫情凸显的健康不平等问题。倡导改善疾病预防和筛查、及时获得医疗保健和治疗、对传染病病例进行分组以及采用社区替代拘留措施以减少被拘留移民人口规模，对于遏制病毒在这一弱势群体中的传播及其随后的发病率和死亡率至关重要。
