(CNN)Nearly a dozen African American pastors from Philadelphia to Los Angeles issued a "moral appeal" to the Trump administration over the "alarming number of deaths" in black communities from Covid-19.
Testing, treatment, and protective gear must be equally distributed and readily available to black and poor communities, and to essential wage workers, healthcare workers, prisons, and shelters, the pastors said at a virtual news conference Wednesday.
"Black and brown people are being tested the least but dying the most," said Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, a pastor in Dallas. "We appeal to federal and state leadership to prioritize healing humanity over restarting the economy."
Rev. Traci Blackmon, who pastors a church in St. Louis, became emotional as she spoke about the suffering she is seeing among her congregants.
"I pastor a small congregation where approximately 80 people gather on a Sunday, and out of those 80, five of those have tested positive for Covid-19. I have two funerals to do this week of people who died," Blackmon said.
Three of those five had to go to the hospital three times before they were given a test, Blackmon said.
"Three times they were sent back home and into their families and into their communities, being positive but not deemed worthy of a test," Blackmon said. "This is my reality. This is all our reality as pastors. And we will not be silent anymore."
Early data from some areas show African Americans make up a higher percentage of Covid-19 victims. In Chicago, 62% of the people who have died from Covid-19 are black, though they make up 30% of the population, according to data from the city. In Louisiana, 32% of the population is African American, but that population represents about 59% of coronavirus deaths in the state.
'Burden of social ills'
Last week, US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said that while many people of color suffer underlying health conditions, it's also likely that there's a social aspect.
"The chronic burden of medical ills is likely to make people of color less resilient to the ravages of Covid-19 and it is possibly, in fact, likely, that the burden of social ills is also contributing," Adams said during a White House press briefing.
The group is also calling on the Trump administration to set up testing sites and field hospitals in black and poor communities hit hardest by the pandemic, and to collect and release data on race, ethnicity and other demographics to identify health inequities.
Bishop William Barber of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in North Carolina said that "the reckless and uncoordinated response to the Covid-19 pandemic by this administration has led to avoidable and unnecessary deaths that is wreaking havoc in the black community."
'Targeted outreach'
"We need to address these inequalities now," Barber said.
Adams said the administration is taking steps to reach and strengthen communities of color.
"More details will be forthcoming, but we are actively working ... (on it through) data collection, targeted outreach to communities of color and increasing financial, employment, education, housing, social and health supports so that everybody has an equal chance to be healthy," Adams said.
The news conference was sponsored by Repairers of the Breach based in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference based in Chicago.
