By For the 30,000 or so Indian Americans living in Colorado, the coronavirus pandemic presents an emotional whiplash right now.
About 43 percent of people in this state are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and hospitalizations continue to fall. Gov. Jared Polis has lifted the statewide mask mandate for vaccinated Coloradans. People are finding freedom they haven’t known for more than a year.
But the pandemic remains a dire emergency in India — the second-most populated country in the world. Densely packed cities, strained health infrastructure and a contagious variant have devastated the public. About 27 million people have been infected in India and more than 303,000 are dead from the virus, and experts say the numbers are likely undercounted.
As pandemic conditions improve in Colorado, Indian Americans here are fielding WhatsApp updates in the wee hours, coordinating hospital beds and oxygen tanks and mourning loved ones from thousands of miles away.
“Being an Indian American is really interesting at this point, just because in America, we’re having a surplus of vaccines. People are choosing to not get the vaccine,” said Sanjana Shenoy, a 23-year-old medical assistant who lives in Lafayette. “Then in India, we’re having such a big problem where people are dying to get vaccines. So it’s kind of tough being in this position, living here, but being an Indian at heart, knowing that people back home are suffering.”
South Asian Americans in particular have faced unique risks with COVID-19, because of comorbidities like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. In the early days of the pandemic in New York City, for example, South Asians there had the second-highest rate of test positivity behind Hispanic people.
Read the rest @ https://www.cpr.org/2021/05/25/indian-americans-covid/
