Blacks are twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as whites

• Blacks are twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as whites, according to the largest such analysis including more than 18 million people in the US and UK.
• Asians are about 1.5 times more likely to contract the disease and may be more likely to be admitted to intensive care and die, according to the study.
• The findings highlight long-reported racial disparities in coronavirus cases, severity and death, which could be due to household disposition, frontline work and access to health care.
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Blacks in the UK and US are twice as likely as whites to contract COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis.

The study, published Thursday in the journal EClinical Medicine, also found that Asians were 1.5 times more likely than whites to contract the disease and were slightly more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit or to die.

The findings underscore previous findings showing that systemic inequalities make people of color more vulnerable to COVID-19 and more likely to suffer from serious illness if they fall ill.

“Clear evidence of an increased risk of infection among ethnic minority groups is of urgent importance to public health,” said Dr Shirley Sze, an academic clinical professor at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and main author of the article.

“We must work to minimize exposure to the virus in these at-risk groups by facilitating their rapid access to health resources and targeting the social and structural disparities that contribute to health inequalities.”

The study included more than 18 million people

To conduct the meta-analysis, researchers from the Universities of Leicester and Nottingham, which were supported by the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Center, pooled data from 42 research articles in the US and eight in the UK that studied the effect of ethnicity on clinical outcomes. in patients with COVID-19.

Twenty-six of the studies were peer reviewed; the rest were pre-prints awaiting review. In total, over 18 million people were included in the analysis.

The study authors found that black participants were about twice as likely as white participants to contract COVID-19, and Asian people were around 1.5 times more likely than white participants.

While Asian participants seemed more likely to be admitted to the ICU and die, this finding was not very strong. The studies that examined the results were also not peer reviewed.

Since the start of the pandemic, data has shown communities of color to be at a disproportionate risk of COVID-19. Specifically, Black, Hispanic, and Native American and Alaskan populations are at increased risk of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. Pregnant people of color are also disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.

Researchers say there are many factors that could help explain the findings, including that ethnic minorities might be more likely to live in crowded multi-generational households, to have frontline jobs that cannot be accomplished from home. and have less access to health care.

The crises, said Dr Anthony Fauci in April, “ultimately highlight some of the real weaknesses and weaknesses of our society,” including racial disparities.

Marian Knight, the lead author of a UK study that found that more than half of pregnant women admitted to hospital with COVID-19 were black or from other ethnic minority groups, previously told Insider that more research on women about their experiences was “urgently needed.”

Understanding the roots of these disparities is difficult and will likely vary between minority groups, “but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to tackle ourselves,” she said.