COVID-19 Daily Research Briefs

Adjusted In-Hospital Mortality from COVID-19 in Louisiana No Different for Black and White Patients. In this retrospective study from a single Louisiana health care system, the association between race and hospital mortality was determined for 1,382 hospitalized patients from a cohort of 3,481 black/non-Hispanic and white/non-Hispanic COVID-19 positive patients. Of these patients, 70.4% were black/non-Hispanic and 29.6% were white/non-Hispanic. The mortality results were adjusted for age, burden of chronic disease using the Charlson Comorbidity Index, public insurance status, residence in a low-income area, and obesity, factors all associated with increased odds of hospital admission. During the study period, 326 patients died. Among the patients who died, 70.6% were black/non-Hispanic, and 29.4% were white/non-Hispanic. The unadjusted case-fatality rate was 30.1% for white patients and 21.6% for black patients. Race was not associated with higher mortality (HR 0.89 for black/non-Hispanic vs. white/non-Hispanic, 95% CI, 0.68 to 1.17) when adjusted for the variables noted above and for severity of clinical illness at presentation to the hospital.

Written by John Hickner, MD, MS, on May 29, 2020. (Source: Price-Haywood EG, Burton J, Fort D, et al. Hospitalization and mortality among black patients and white patients with Covid-19 [published online May 27, 2020]. N Engl J Med. 2020. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa2011686(www.nejm.org))