Dr. Anthony Fauci told the Congressional Hispanic Conference that we "must now set and re-shine a light on this extraordinary disparity related to the social determinants of health that are experienced by the Latino community."
Fauci said hospitalizations among Latinos were 359 per 100,000 compared to 78 in whites. Latinos represent 45 percent of deaths of people younger than 21, Fauci added.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, cited 55 percent of the deaths in Texas are among Hispanics and 50 percent in California.
"We are seeing the historic decimation of the Hispanic community," Hotez said. "For Latinos, it's a huge number of parents being taken away."
"We are the worst hit country in the world" with 7 million cases and over 200,000K deaths, Fauci said.
Fauci is calling for a 'decade's long commitment' to make Latinx community less vulnerable to health disparities.
"That something that you do not fix in a month or a year. It's something that requires a decade's long commitment to change those social determinants, which makes that community more susceptible to diabetes," he said.
Earlier, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told ABC News that President Donald Trump's claims on his stance on masks were "taken out of context" at Tuesday's presidential debate.
When Democratic nominee Joe Biden said if all Americans wore masks, and social-distanced between now and January, 100,000 lives could be saved, Trump responded, "Dr. Fauci said the opposite."
Setting the record straight, Fauci told ABC News' "Start Here" podcast, "Very early on in the pandemic ... there was a shortage of PPE and masks for health care providers who needed them desperately since they were putting their lives and their safety on the line every day. So the feeling was that people who were wanting to have masks in the community, namely just people out in the street, might be hoarding masks and making the shortage of masks even greater. In that context, we said that we did not recommend masks."
In the weeks that followed, Fauci said, "it became clear that they worked. Number two: it became clear that cloth coverings worked as well as surgical masks, so the idea of a shortage of masks that would take it away from those who really need it was no longer there because anybody could get a mask."
Over time, Fauci said data proved that masks work and there clearly is asymptomatic transmission.
Information from ABC News
WATCH: Eyewitness to a Pandemic
Episode 2: An Impending Nightmare
MORE CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 COVERAGE
How coronavirus changed the New York region
Do you have coronavirus symptoms?
What's Open, What's Closed in the Tri-State area
Back to school information
COVID-19 Help, Information. Stimulus and Business Updates
UPDATES
New York City
New Jersey
Long Island
Westchester and Hudson Valley
Connecticut
abc7NY Phase Tracker: