Language barriers could be partly to blame for why the Latino community in Shelby County account for close to 30 percent of the postive COVID-19 cases, though they make up less than 10 percent of the population.
Officials have teamed up with community leaders to create a Spanish-language website dedicated to coronavirus information.
“It’s a poverty-level situation. It’s also a language barrier situation. It’s also a migratory-status situation,” says Ben Jabbour, who does bilingual marketing and community engagement for La Prensa Latina, the bilingual media company behind the website. “All of these factors come into play with this current pandemic.”
The City of Memphis partnered with La Prensa to create the website mascarasarribamemphis.com.
Spanish speakers can find information about testing locations, the county’s mask ordinance and other resources.
Many Latino workers are in essential service-sector jobs which puts them at greater risk of exposure to the virus, making information about how to protect themselves all the more important.
“We know that they need to leave the house to work and all that. We know that there's a struggle, but we explain the importance of social distancing as well as wearing masks,” Jabbour says.
Although the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the Latino community is disturbing, Jabbour says that could indicate that some of the messaging is working: more people may be getting tested when they get sick.
Due to an editing error, this post originally mistated the percentage of the population that Latinos represent locally.