Black coronavirus patients in Atlanta were six times more likely to be hospitalized than white patients, new CDC data shows
- Researchers looked at more than 500 coronavirus patients at six hospital and associated outpatient clinics in Atlanta
- Nearly 80% of hospitalized patients were black, making them six times more likely to need hospitalization than white patients
- Black patients were also more likely have several factors that contribute to hospitalization including obesity, diabetes and a lack of insurance
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Black coronavirus patients in Atlanta were much more likely to be hospitalized than white patients, a new report finds.
African Americans infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, were hospitalized six times more often than their Caucasian peers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed on Wednesday.
They were also more likely have several factors that contribute to hospitalization including obesity, diabetes and a lack of insurance.
In a new CDC report, nearly 80% of hospitalized patients in Atlanta were black, making them six times more likely to need hospitalization than white patients (above)
Black patients were also more likely have several factors that contribute to hospitalization including obesity, diabetes and a lack of insurance. Pictured: Medics transport an African American patient showing COVID-19 symptoms from his apartment in Stamford, Connecticut, April 4
For the report, the team looked at the medical records of 531 patients at six hospitals and associated outpatient clinics in Atlanta, Georgia.
The patients were all 18 years old or older and were seen between March 1, 2020 and April 7, 2020.
Compared with non-hospitalized patients, the hospitalized patients more likely to be male and older than 61 years ago.
Additionally, 79 percent of the patients required hospitalization were black. By comparison, just 13 percent were white.
This means black patients were hospitalized at six times the rate of white patients.
Other factors, including having diabetes, being obesity and a lack of insurance, were linked to a greater risk of hospitalization.
However, these are all more likely to occur in black patients.
According to the US government’s Office of Minority Health, African American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to be diagnosed with diabetes.
Additionally, according to the American Psychological Association, 48 percent of black adults are clinically obese as opposed to 32.6 percent of white adults.
Lack of insurance also disproportionately affects blacks with 11 percent uninsured in 2018 compared to eight percent of whites, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports.
The authors say the association between being African American and increased hospitalization occurred even when the analysis controlled for other characteristics such as underlying conditions.
‘Underlying conditions alone might not account for the higher rate of hospitalization among black persons,’ they wrote.
‘This might indicate that black persons are more likely to be hospitalized because of more severe illness, or it might indicate that black persons are less likely to be identified in the outpatient setting.’
Researchers say this may reflect differences in health care access, but they note that more studies are needed to fully understand this link.
In the US, there are more than 2.1 million confirmed cases of the virus and more than 116,000 deaths.
