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COVID’s Lasting Toll on East Boston’s Latine Community

By hola | Published June 24, 2026 | No Comments

This story is the first in a three-part series that seeks to pay tribute to community members in East Boston who lost their lives during the pandemic and reflect on what the pandemic tells us about today. The COVID-19 Memorial Project was made possible with support from the Mass Cultural Council.

Beatrice once had a vibrant life working and volunteering in her East Boston community, but when COVID-19 broke out at the start of the decade, it forever changed her.

She is one of the survivors of the deadly virus that killed at least 7 million people worldwide before the public health emergency ended in 2023, according to the World Health Organization. 

COVID-19 damaged her kidneys. So today, she spends three days a week connected to a dialysis machine to filter waste from her blood. As a result, Beatrice says she’s lost her good cheer and has to use a walker to maintain her balance. 

“The experience of getting dialysis,” Beatrice said, “I do not wish it on anyone. It’s a sad thing because you no longer depend on yourself, you depend on a machine.”

Beatrice is one of many Eastie residents whose lives changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Elena, the loss of her mother and the mental health of her daughter has taken a toll on her own peace of mind. In this story, we are publishing only their first names to protect their privacy. For Noemy Rodriguez, it was the widespread unemployment in her East Boston neighborhood that left her feeling anxious. A community organizer with the Chelsea nonprofit GreenRoots, Rodriguez remembers an explosion of need.

“It was so difficult and so grueling,” said Rodriguez. “I felt physically drained, and at such a rapid pace, too. Even though I was in good health myself, the very first calls involved people who had started to go down.”

According to Census data, Eastie has the largest Hispanic population of any neighborhood in Boston and one of the largest immigrant populations in the city. In fact, the Latine population may be larger than the 2020 Census captured, according to the Massachusetts Census Equity Fund and a report by the Boston Foundation’s Boston Indicators. Ten-year census self-response rates among Latine residents and immigrants, which have historically been low compared to other groups, were further repressed by the challenges the pandemic lockdowns created for the 2020 Census, according to the Boston Indicators’ report.

Even if the 2020 census undercounted Eastie’s Latine population, Latine residents still had a higher incidence rate at 7,984 per 100,000 people than white residents—2,905 per 100,000 people—in the first year of the pandemic, with East Boston among the state’s most affected neighborhoods, according to the City of Boston.

Just one month into the pandemic, in April 2020, the City of Boston reported that its unemployment rate had reached 17.1%, the highest rate in the country at the time, with Latine and Black residents nearly twice as likely to be out of work compared to white residents.

Beatrice, who believes she was exposed to the virus while packing and delivering donated food to residents in need, was infected in early 2020. Once hospitalized, she did not see her husband for three months.

“He couldn’t touch me, he couldn’t talk to me, he couldn’t do anything. If he wanted to see me, he had to do so from afar,” she recalled of those difficult days. 

Rodriguez worried about neighbors who worked in hospitals and public transit and her own family. Rodriguez’s children have medical conditions that left them vulnerable. 

“I used to say to myself, ‘What if my child catches COVID? What’s going to happen?’” she said.

She remembers the day that her neighbor’s husband died of COVID. The ambulance arrived on Bennington Street with its siren blaring at 5 in the morning. 

“My friend was inconsolable; she was devastated,” Rodriguez recalled, “The hardest part was that we couldn’t hug them.” She recalled her neighbor exclaiming, “The clinic didn’t treat him. He could have lived, but they wouldn’t attend to him; they refused to treat him.”

While Rodriguez’s family emerged from the pandemic without that kind of life-changing trauma, other people she knows were not so lucky.

The impact of COVID-19 has lingered for Elena, too. 

She moved to the U.S. in 2000, living in East Boston and supporting her family in El Salvador. She first tested positive for COVID-19 in 2022. After she became ill, she said the virus spread quickly through her household.

“In infecting myself, I infected all of my family,” she said, “That changed my life.”

Her mother became gravely ill and succumbed to the coronavirus on her 25th day in the hospital. After doctors let her know that her mother would no longer be able to have an independent life, Elena made the painful decision to follow her mother’s wishes and disconnect her from life support.

“To this day, I take antidepressants because life is harder now,” she said. “I feel as though I took my mother away from my siblings. Even though they tell me I shouldn’t feel guilty, I always do.” 

Family finances also grew tight, prompting her to turn to local food distribution sites.

“For two years, I barely worked at all.” Elena recalled the 2020-2022 period as a time when “donations were scarce, and the lines were long—up to three blocks long—with people waiting for food … the money wasn’t enough to keep paying bills and rent, and to buy groceries.”

“My mom’s church helped us a lot,” she recalled. “Whenever they could, they brought us food … when we got sick, they brought us medications.”

Today, she’s focused on her daughter, who survived the virus but has struggled ever since.

“My daughter’s mental health is also suffering,” Elena said. “I continue to struggle with her depression as well, because it affected all of us.” 

In spite of her loss, Elena says she tries to set an example she hopes will give her daughter strength, too. 

“I have to have the attitude of not letting myself fall,” she said, “because I always remember my mom, who was strong, and so I have to move forward and help my daughter move forward.”

Beatrice is also striving to return to a more active life. While she said she feels let down by most of the nonprofits she reached out to after her illness, Rodriguez at GreenRoots was always there for her. Recently, she has started venturing out again to take walks, or as GreenRoots calls them, “Caminatas Verdes,” meaning “Green Walks.” These walks serve as weekly opportunities for local residents to enjoy gentle exercise, social connection and emotional support. 

“We go out walking every Tuesday,” Beatrice said, “That helped me, little by little, to reintegrate into the organization again and, with their help, I’ve been able to move forward.”

– Story by Marvin Juarez

– Copy edited by Kami Waller

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