Why East Boston’s coronavirus rate is so much higher than the rest of the city

State Representative Adrian Madaro (D-East Boston) explains East Boston’s test positivity rate of nearly 8%, compared to 4.2% in Mattapan and, according to today’s statistics, 1, 4% statewide.

Our community is no worse for wearing masks / social distancing, or taking fewer public health precautions than any other. This is not why our prices are higher than in the suburbs. Our COVID infection rates are higher because our communities are systematically more vulnerable to the spread of this disease. This was true at the start of the shutdown, and it became more true as MA progressed through the reopening phases.

Many working class Eastie residents do not have the privilege of working from home. Their job requires them to go to work, and in most cases, they interact with co-workers or members of the public through jobs in the service industry – construction, cleaning, restaurants, etc. of those service workers stayed home, our state’s reopening means more are back to work in the public now. This means residents of Eastie and surrounding communities are at increased risk of exposure and infection to COVID.

And accommodation is expensive and hard to find. Most workers in Eastie live in apartments filled with family or roommates and short on space. People share rooms. When everyone lives together in a small space, there isn’t a lot of opportunity for social distancing. This means that when a worker gets sick, they have nowhere to quarantine.