Friday, April 24, 2020

Racial distribution of COVID-19 cases in New York

According to New York City data, age-adjusted rates of COVID-19 cases per 1000000 people as of April 16,2020 are

Race EthnicityNon-hospitalizedNon-fatal hospitalizedKnown to have died
Black/African American335.5271.792.3
Hispanic/Latino271.6198.674.3
White190.4114.545.2
Asian95.182.234.5
combined with NYC demographics
White: 63.79%
Black or African American: 15.64%
Other race: 8.76%
Asian: 8.31%
Two or more races: 3.05%
Native American: 0.41%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.04%

We can see that African Americans are disproportionately represented as many media outlets or government organizations acknowledged. But less known is that the Asian population is significantly represented as well, if we factor in the proportion of the Asians in the whole population in the city. Note that White is 63.79% in the population compared to Asian 8.31%. This is 7.67 times as much. But the non-hospitalized cases are 190.4 and 95.1, for White and Asians respectively. Note 190.4/95.1=2.00. This means in NYC, Asians are 7.67/2.00=3.83 times as likely to contract the virus (but not hospitalized) as the white. Similar calculations can be done to non-fatal hospitalized cases and deaths.

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