Outcomes of hospitalized COVID-19 patients belonging to ethnic/racial minorities in Greece

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONResearch suggests that racial minorities are overrepresented in the number of COVID-19 related deaths compared to people of White origin. This is the first study to assess racial differences in the clinical characteristics and outcomes of COVID-19 positive patients, hospitalized in Greece. METHODS This retrospective, cross-sectional study included 628 COVID-19 hospitalized patients, from 10 September to 31 December 2020. We compared data concerning gender, age, comorbidities and outcome, between patients of European and non-European origin. Moreover, we applied logistic regression in which the outcome, in our case in-hospital death, was assessed with race, age, sex, and Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) score. RESULTS In the first and unadjusted race-only logistic regression model, non-Europeans (OR=0.057; 95% CI: 0.008-0.411, p=0.005) were less likely than European patients to die in the hospital. However, controlling for sex, age and CCI score resulted in non-significant differences. CONCLUSIONS There are a lot of statistically significant differences between European and non-European COVID-19 hospitalized patients regarding their clinical characteristics, with the second presenting a lower hospital mortality rate, but after adjusting for age, sex and CCI score, race seems to be not significant.