Over the past two weeks, COVID-19 cases in the United States have risen an alarming 145%. The spread of the delta variant is causing a dangerous spike in cases – including among people who are vaccinated – and sparked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to call for people to once again wear masks indoors. And hospitals are once again concerned about hitting capacity in their COVID-19 units.

In this week’s episode, in partnership with Kaiser Health News, we follow one doctor as she dives into medical training on the front lines of the pandemic. 

Living and working in the predominantly Latino agricultural hub of Fresno, California, Dr. Paloma Marin-Nevarez saw the disparities of the disease with her own eyes. Latinos in the United States are nearly three times as likely as White people to be hospitalized and more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19. Meanwhile, only 6% of doctors in California are Latino, compared with nearly 40% of the state’s population. Marin-Nevarez sees medicine as a way to try to heal inequity. “I wanted to go to a place where I was needed, first and foremost,” she said. 

As the death toll and massive disparities of the pandemic mounted, reporter Jenny Gold asked Marin-Nevarez whether she felt like a hero. The doctor replied that she found herself frustrated with people who called health care workers “heroes” but then shirked their own responsibility to stop the spread of COVID-19. 

She told Gold: “What if every single person had seen themselves as a hero and then said no to traveling during the holidays, or had said no to throwing a wedding during a pandemic, or had said no to having a party or to have a get-together, or to give something up? What if everyone had thought of themselves that way? And then said, ‘It is also my job to take care of others.’ ” 

When we first aired this episode in February, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 had reached 500,000 people. As we broadcast it this week, over 600,000 Americans have died.

Listen to the episode: Into the COVID ICU

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John Oliver highlights modern-day redlining 

Reveal’s reporting on racial discrimination in housing got the late-night treatment on the latest “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” On Sunday, he did a deep drive into how race-based housing discrimination persists more than 50 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. The segment cited Reveal’s investigative project Kept Out. For the story, former Reveal reporters Aaron Glantz and Emmanuel Martinez analyzed millions of mortgage records in 2018 to expose the practice of modern-day redlining. Their analysis of mortgages in 61 cities around the country found that African Americans and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans at rates far higher than their White counterparts. That discrimination contributes to a persistent racial wealth gap, as it’s harder for Black and Latino Americans to build generational wealth by owning homes. 

“Even though overt discrimination was now illegal, there were and still are many, many ways for neighborhoods to keep themselves White,” Oliver said. “At every step of the process, Black homebuyers are faced with discrimination.” 

Watch the John Oliver segment: ‘Last Week Tonight’ on housing discrimination 

Read the story: For people of color, banks are shutting the door to homeownership 

Listen to the episode: The red line: Racial disparities in lending