Tyler Perry mourns death of longtime hairstylist; urges African Americans to take COVID-19 seriously

ATLANTA (WGCL) — Longtime Atlanta celebrity hairstylist Charles Gregory has died from the coronavirus. Tyler Perry paid tribute to Gregory, who worked for his company for years, posting on Facebook that “it saddens me to think of him of dying this way.” According to Gregory’s Facebook page, he was an Emmy-nominated make-up artist, wig designer and hair stylist. Perry described Gregory as “warm, loving and hilarious” and said “We all loved to see him coming and hear his laughter.”

Gregory shared on Instagram on March 25 that he had been diagnosed with the deadly virus. Perry also took to the social media platform to urge African Americans to stay at home and take the dangers of COVID-19 seriously. He wrote “Black people, we are at a disproportionately higher risk of dying from this virus. Please, please, please, I beg you to take this seriously. You have to socially distance yourself. That means stop hanging out, stop congregating, stop doing anything that will put not only your life in danger but also the lives of so many others.”

Numbers show the coronavirus is disproportionately infecting and killing African Americans at a higher rate.

According to numbers released by the Georgia Department of Public Health, 104 African Americans have died from the virus and 88 whites. Far more African Americans have tested positive with 1,313 cases and 1,223 whites have tested positive.

Dr. Elizabeth Ford, interim Health Director at Fulton County Board of Health, said what’s more troubling is the number of people who aren’t identifying race during COVID-19 testing. According to the state DPH, there are more than 5,400 cases where race is unknown.

Ford told CBS46 the lack of data makes it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the racial disparity, which is crucial to helping those impacted communities.

“I’m troubled by the fact that 70% of the cases that we have identified as positive, we don’t have racial information on them. Of the 30% we do have, we are seeing that this is an over-representation of African Americans in that number, but it’s not a big enough picture.”

Ford said Dekalb and Fulton county’s health departments are working on ways to encourage people to identify during COVID-19 testing.

“They’re not checking that box on the form for some reason, so I’ve asked staff to be a little more diligent in Fulton and Dekalb about making sure that information is collected because it’s critical for us to know,” she said.