In the seven months of the Covid-19 pandemic, good data have yet to emerge showing how many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have contracted or died from the disease and how the group's death rate compares to those of other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.

Ideally, each county in the country would collect data for cause of death by race, experts like Karthick Ramakrishnan, director of the research firm AAPI Data, say. But because that's not the case, understanding the virus's impact on the community requires piecing together a variety of statistics that illustrate the impact of the disease in contrasting ways.

There are several reasons the AAPI community may be undertested.

Ramakrishnan said the stigmatization of Asian Americans — especially those who look Chinese — as being the source of the coronavirus helps make some reluctant to seek care.

"That has had a chilling effect in the community in which people have been scared to go outside, let alone seek care," he said.

Ramakrishnan said the numbers point to the urgent need for better data collection.

"I think what the data we have so far suggests is we need to act fast. We can't wait another year or two for improvements in data collection. I think there's enough evidence which suggests there's a problem, and a very serious one," he said.

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