Black COVID-19 patients are nearly three times as likely to be hospitalized as their white counterparts, a new study shows.
Published in the journal Health Affairs, the study analyzed data on COVID-19 patients at Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health. Researchers examined 1,052 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at Sutter Health from Jan. 1 to April 8.
They found that black COVID-19 patients had 2.7 times the odds of being hospitalized as non-Hispanic white patients, which "may indicate that African Americans have more advanced or severe illness at the time of presenting for COVID-19 testing and medical care," researchers said.
Of black patients with confirmed COVID-19, 52.5 percent were hospitalized, compared with 25.7 percent of white patients. Also, a higher proportion of black patients (24.6 percent) were transferred to intensive care units than their white counterparts (10.7 percent).