On the 17th, local time, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar (Alex Azar) said in an interview with US media that the reason why the number of COVID-19 in the United States is so large is due to the health status of Americans, especially ethnic minority communities. This view has been refuted by the US media.

According to (CNN), Azar made the remarks while accepting CNN's "State of the Union" program, which is hosted by Jack Tapper. At the beginning of the program, Tapper pointed out that the death toll of COVID-19 in the United States was close to 90, 000. Azar later blamed the health of Americans, saying, "Unfortunately, the population of the United States is very diverse." it is an ethnic group with serious unhealthy concomitant diseases, which puts many people in our community, especially African-Americans, as well as minority communities at risk. Because these people have potential disease health differences and concomitant diseases. This is an unfortunate legacy of the American health care system, and of course we have to deal with it. "
When Tapper further asked whether Azar's comments implied that many Americans died of COVID-19 because they were "more unhealthy than people in other parts of the world," Azar denied it, but further said: the fact that the "burden of concomitant diseases in the United States is seriously disproportionate (including obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes) proves that it does put us at risk of any type of disease."

When asked if this meant that such a high death toll was "the fault of Americans," Azar said, "it's not a mistake," adding that it was a simple epidemiology. "if we have high blood pressure and diabetes, we are at risk of serious complications caused by novel coronavirus."

Azar's claim was quickly questioned by the US media. Citing the results of a study released by the US public media (APM) on May 11, CNN pointed out that the death toll in the United States at that time exceeded 80, 000, of which only 17155 were black.

Vox also analyzed in an article that it is true that "public health injustices have led to an increase in the death toll of people of color", but blaming it for the United States' higher death toll than the rest of the world is an excuse, which seems to imply that minorities, not the federal government, are responsible.

The US media also pointed out that a more direct and broader explanation for the unusually high death toll in the United States should be the US government's "chaotic" and "anti-scientific" response to the pandemic. Even if people of color do have poor health, it is the result of their long-standing socio-economic marginalization and uneven access to nutrition. In other words, Azar's statement can be overturned, not that people of color are driving the rise in the death toll of COVID-19 in the United States, but that the US government is promoting the death of people of color.