Characteristics and Outcomes of Latinx Patients With COVID-19 in Comparison With Other Ethnic and Racial Groups

Abstract

Background There is limited understating of the impact of COVID-19 on the Latinx population. We hypothesized that Latinx patients would be more likely to be hospitalized and admitted to the ICU than White patients. Methods We analyzed all patients with COVID-19 in 12 Massachusetts hospitals between February 1 and April 14, 2020. We examined the association between race, ethnicity, age, reported comorbidities, and hospitalization and intensive care unit (ICU) admission using multivariable regression. Results Of 5190 COVID-19 patients, 29% were hospitalized; 33% required ICU and 4.3% died. 46% of patients were White, 25% Latinx, 14% African American, and 3% Asian American. Ethnicity and race were significantly associated with hospitalization. More Latinx and African American patients in the younger age groups were hospitalized than whites. Latinx and African Americans disproportionally required ICU, with 39% of hospitalized Latinx patients requiring ICU compared to 33% of African Americans, 24% of Asian Americans, and 30% of Whites (p&0.007). Within each ethnic and racial group, age and male gender were independently predictive of hospitalization. Previously reported pre-existing comorbidities contributed to the need for hospitalization in all racial and ethnic groups (p&0.05). However, the observed disparities were less likely related to reported comorbidities, with Latinx and African American patients being admitted at twice the rate of Whites, regardless of such comorbidities. Conclusions Latinx and African American patients with COVID-19 have higher rates of hospitalization and ICU admission than White patients. The etiologies of such disparities are likely multifactorial and cannot be explained only by reported comorbidities.

Comorbidities and Age Are Associated With Persistent COVID-19 PCR Positivity

“…Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2020 ( Guan et al., 2020 ). Patients with COVID-19 present with a wide variety of symptoms, such as cough, shortness of breath, headache or body aches, fatigue, and loss of taste or smell ( Guan et al., 2020 ; Izzy et al., 2020 ; Roberts et al., 2020 ). As of December 2020, COVID-19 resulted with over 67.8 million confirmed cases worldwide in 215 countries with over 1.5 million deaths ( Worldometers.info., 2020 ).…”

Treatment of Severe COVID-19 with Convalescent Plasma in Bronx, NYC

“…In their study, 14% of CCP recipients were Black/African American, 31% were Caucasian/White, 42% were Hispanic/Latinx, 34% had hypertension, 25% had diabetes, and all received 2 units of CCP. Our cohort was older, was more severely ill, and came from racial/ethnic populations at higher risk for severe COVID-19 and death ( 48 ): 26% of CCP recipients were Black/African American, 9% were White/Caucasian, 51% were Hispanic/Latinx — which was associated with mortality in our multivariable analysis — 82% had hypertension, 42% had diabetes, and all received 1 unit of CCP. This suggests social determinants of health may have adversely affected clinical outcomes of our cohort.…”

Host genome analysis of structural variations by Optical Genome Mapping provides clinically valuable insights into genes implicated in critical immune, viral infection, and viral replication pathways in patients with severe COVID-19

“…The SVs overlapping the genes of interest in severely ill patients were compared with a population dataset [Bionano Genomics (Bionano) controls] with <20% frequency filter. The SVs were further interrogated against the African American ethnicity in the Bionano control dataset [29][30][31]. Subsequently, only variants disrupting the coding regions of genes of interest were selected for further analysis.…”