With 40 million people and substantial county and regional variation in socio-demographics and health services, California is an important setting to study disparities. Its population — 39.1% Latino, 5.3% Black, and 14.4% Asian — experienced 54,124 COVID-19 deaths through March 7, 2021, the highest nationally. We analyzed California’s racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 exposure risks, testing rates, test positivity, and case rates, through October 2020. We combined data from 15.4 million SARS-CoV-2 tests with sub-county exposure risk estimates from the American Community Survey. Based on accumulated evidence, we defined “high exposure risk” households as those with ≥1 essential workers and fewer rooms than inhabitants. Latino individuals are 8.1 times more likely to live in high exposure risk households than White individuals (23.6% vs. 2.9%); overrepresented in cumulative cases (3,784 vs. 1,112 per 100,000); and underrepresented in cumulative testing (35,635 vs. 48,930 per 100,000). These risks and outcomes were worse for Latinos than for other racial/ethnic groups. Sub-county disparity analyses can inform local targeting of interventions and resources, including community-based testing and vaccine access and uptake measures. Tracking COVID-19 disparities and developing equity-focused public health programming that mitigates effects of systemic racism can help improve health outcomes among California’s populations of color.
Racial/Ethnic Disparities In COVID-19 Exposure Risk, Testing, and Cases at the Subcounty Level in California
[Category] MERS, SARS,
[Article Type] Article
[Source] PMC
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