900,000 New Yorkers Lost at Least 3 Loved Ones to Covid

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900,000 New Yorkers Lost at Least 3 Loved Ones to Covid

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The areas that were hit hardest by Covid, including southeast Brooklyn, the Bronx, Upper Manhattan and the southeast corner of Queens, had high numbers of essential workers. The people who went to work delivered food, staffed restaurants, provided child care and cleaning, or worked in health care and transit.

Losing loved ones to the virus was more common among those workers, especially those who were low-income and people of color, the survey found. While about a quarter of all New Yorkers lost at least one person they were close to, about a third of low-income essential workers who were people of color did. Eleven percent of all New Yorkers lost at least three people to Covid, compared with 16 percent of low-income essential workers, the survey found.

Janeth Solis, 52, of the Bronx, lost four loved ones during the first year and a half of the pandemic. Her mother, step-grandmother and grandmother, who lived together in a house in Ridgewood, Queens, died one by one in the pandemic’s first weeks. Her mother-in-law died in April 2021.

It wasn’t until this year that Ms. Solis was able to visit her grandmother’s ashes, which had been shipped to her native Colombia in June 2020. The visit and therapy have helped her heal.

“We didn’t really have closure,” she said.

Rates of depression and anxiety in New York rose during the pandemic, particularly among those who had lost loved ones and those under financial strain. Based on research from past disasters, these effects are likely to continue for months or years to come, researchers at the Department of Health have said.

“Mental health needs are on the rise everywhere,” said Dr. Ashwin Vasan, the city’s health commissioner. “And it’s very difficult to separate that from the impact of trauma and grief.”

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