Black patients with COVID-19 account for majority of hospitalizations, deaths in Louisiana cohort
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Despite comprising only 31% of the study population, blacks accounted for nearly 77% of COVID-19 hospitalizations and more than 70% of COVID-19 deaths in a large cohort of patients from Louisiana, according to a retrospective cohort study.
“Surveillance of the clinical characteristics and outcomes of hospitalized patients with [COVID-19] is imperative for elucidating the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States,” Eboni G. Price-Haywood, MD, MPH, of the Ochsner Health Center for Outcomes and Health Services Research and the University of Queensland Ochsner Clinical School, both of which are located in New Orleans, and colleagues wrote. “Although many reports on COVID-19 have highlighted age- and sex-related differences in health outcomes, racial and ethnic differences in outcomes have yet to be described in depth.”
In order to compare the clinical characteristics and hospitalizations of COVID-19 cases among non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white subpopulations in Louisiana, Price-Haywood and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study, examining data from COVID-19-positive patients seen in the Ochsner Health system in Louisiana between March 1 and April 11, 2020. The Ochsner Health patient population is 31% non-Hispanic black and 65% non-Hispanic white.
Of the 3,481 COVID-19-positive patients in the analyses, 60% were women, 70.4% were black and 29.6% were white. The authors noted that black patients had higher rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and chronic kidney disease than white patients.
According to the study, 76.9% of the 1,382 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were black. Researchers found that black race, increasing age, a higher score on the Charlson Comorbidity Index, public insurance, residing in a low-income area and obesity correlated with increased odds of hospital admission. Of the 326 patients died from COVID-19, 70.6% were black. Increasing age and presenting with an elevated respiratory rate were associated with higher in-hospital mortality. The authors noted that black race was not independently associated with higher mortality (HR for death vs. whites = 0.89; 95% CI, 0.68-1.17).
“This study provides comparative epidemiologic characteristics of black non-Hispanic patients who are underrepresented in the COVID-19 medical literature to date,” the authors wrote. “The study also sheds light on differences in clinical presentations.” – by Caitlyn Stulpin
Disclosures: Price-Haywood reports nonfinancial support from Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.
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