Study: Majority of US Hospital Patients are Black

A majority of coronavirus patients in U.S. hospitals are black, according to a study released over the weekend in the journal Health Affairs.  

Additionally, black patients seeking care have more advanced cases of COVID-19 than white or Hispanic patients. Researchers in California also found that black patients were hospitalized at nearly three times the rate of white or Hispanic patients after adjusting for age, sex, comorbidities and income.

Black patients “are coming to us later and sicker, and they’re accessing our care through the emergency department and acute care environment,” said Dr. Stephen H. Lockhart, the chief medical officer at Sutter Health in Sacramento and one of the authors of the new study.

The researchers analyzed 1,052 confirmed cases of COVID-19 from January 1 to April 8 from Sutter Health, a large health care system in Northern California.

New data released in late April from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 83% of people in Georgia hospitalized with COVID-19 during March were black.

"The proportion of hospitalized patients who were black was higher than expected based on overall hospital admissions," the report said.

A study released on May 20 in the Lancet Infectious Diseases found that black people were four times as likely to test positive for coronavirus, compared with white people.

Researchers also found that people living in the most deprived areas were more than three times as likely to test positive for COVID-19 in comparison with those living in the least deprived areas.

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