Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

October 1, 2020

Widening the Gap Greater Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Burden after Accounting for Missing Race/ethnicity Data

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  • [Preprint, not peer-reviewed] Among 19,637 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection reported in Fulton County, Georgia from February 29th to August 19th 2020, 36% were missing race/ethnicity information in the case report. Compared to complete case analyses, imputation and bias-adjustment for race/ethnicity yielded higher estimates of infection rates (1.5 to 1.8-fold increase). The magnitude of the absolute disparity increased in the bias-adjusted analysis relative to the complete case analysis (1.3-fold among classified Black and 1.6-fold among classified Hispanic vs. classified white). The authors conclude that complete case analyses may underestimate absolute disparities in infection rates.

Labgold et al. (Sept 30, 2020). Widening the Gap Greater Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Burden after Accounting for Missing Race/ethnicity Data. Preprint downloaded Oct 1 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.30.20203315