As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, both anecdotal evidence and emerging studies are making it clear how the disease disproportionately affects people of different ethnic backgrounds.
However, the reasons for this, the precise form these effects take, and how different ethnic groups are affected are not yet fully understood.
For example, a person’s ethnicity may increase the likelihood that they will be exposed to the virus, contract it, develop a severe case of COVID-19, or all three.
There may also be different reasons for these increased risks. Ethnicity can increase the risk due to associated diseases, socioeconomic status, education, employment, genetic differences, or problems linked to racism, which encompasses many of the issues mentioned above.
Furthermore, ethnicity itself is a complicating factor due to the complexity of individual genetic inheritance.
As Dr. Winston Morgan, professor of toxicology and clinical biochemistry at the University of East London, UK, argues, “there is as much genetic variation within racialized groups as among the entire human population.”
For researchers, while genetic differences can sometimes be associated with specific ethnicities and linked to particular health problems, it is not at all clear how this might work in the context of COVID-19.
Indeed, according to Dr. Morgan: “The evidence suggests that the new coronavirus does not discriminate, but rather exposes existing discrimination. The persistence of ideas about race today—despite the lack of scientific basis—demonstrates how these ideas can mutate to justify the power structures that have governed our society since the 18th century.”
In this context, a better understanding of the relationship between adverse COVID-19 outcomes and ethnicity is crucial to reducing these negative outcomes.
To contribute to this task, the authors of this research conducted a study to examine whether people from different ethnic groups are more likely to be hospitalized with severe COVID-19 and whether they are more likely to die from the disease. The team also wanted to consider socioeconomic factors and comorbidities associated with the identified differences.
The authors conducted two studies. The first, an observational study, analyzed data from 1,827 adults with confirmed cases of COVID-19 who were admitted to King’s College Hospital in London, UK, between March 1 and June 2, 2020.
The second study, a case-control study, compared a subset of 872 patients residing in marginal urban areas, based on their age and location, with a control group of 3488 people drawn from a primary care database that included people from the local area; four controls for each of the patients in the subset.
