Racial minorities more likely to become infected with COVID-19
An analysis of Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California early in the COVID-19 pandemic found that racial minorities were more likely than white patients to test positive for COVID-19. The findings are published in
Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers from Kaiser Permanente, The Permanente Medical Group, and Stanford Cancer Institute studied health records for 3.5 million patients in the Kaiser Health system, more than 91,000 of whom received a COVID-19 test between Feb. 1 and May 31, 2020. That data showed that Latino patients were nearly 4 times as likely as white patients to become infected with the virus, while Asian and Black patients were 2 times as likely to test positive for COVID-19 compared to white patients. The odds of hospitalization were also higher for Latino, Asian, and Black patients with COVID-19 than for white patients. However, the study did not find racial disparities in mortality amon