NEW YORK, July 29 (Xinhua) -- The coronavirus pandemic walloped the U.S. rural areas last year, and new research has found that, across the small towns and farmlands, COVID-19 killed Black and Hispanic people at considerably higher rates than it did their white neighbors, reported The New York Times on Thursday.

"Even at the end of the pandemic's second year, in February 2022, overstretched health systems, poverty, chronic illnesses and lower vaccination rates were forcing nonwhite people to bear the burden of the virus," said the report.

Black and Hispanic people in rural areas suffered an exceptionally high toll, dying at far higher rates than in cities during that second year of the pandemic, it noted.

Black, Hispanic and Native American people in rural areas recorded "the deadliest second year of the pandemic of any large racial or ethnic groups anywhere in the United States," according to the new research, which was led by Andrew Stokes, an assistant professor of global health at Boston University.

In those communities, the Joe Biden administration's reassurances that every COVID-19 death is now preventable jar with the difficulties of obtaining medical care, said the report, adding that "rural pharmacies are often few and far between, making it difficult for poorer and less mobile residents to receive critical antiviral pills." Enditem

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