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Background: To examine racial and ethnic differences in wealth and other economic, exposure and baseline health-related risks of COVID-19 among older adults in the U.S.  Methods: Using rich data on wealth and long-term care use among older Americans unique to the 2016 Health and Retirement Study, we quantify differences in COVID-19 vulnerability among non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic respondents aged 50+. We measure wealth, other economic (insurance, income); exposure (long-term care, employment, telework, household size); and health (chronic conditions, smoking) risk stratified by age (50-64, 65+). Results: Blacks and Hispanics face dramatically greater financial risk that potentially increases exposure to COVID-19, relative to whites; Blacks and Hispanics are four to five times more likely to have no financial wealth. Blacks are also more likely than whites to...

To the editors of the Pan African Medical JournalThe effect of global migration can impact public health [1]. The initial cases of the outbreak of the novel COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa were reported in February 2020 [2]. Since then, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak as a global pandemic [2]. The governments of sub-Saharan African countries joined global communities in setting measures for emergency preparedness, which includes infection prevention and control measures to contain the spread of the infection and treatment of those affected. According to WHO-AFRO COVID-19 data report, as at April 1, 2020, about 3,182 cases were confirmed and 60 deaths were recorded in sub-Saharan Africa [3]. Bearing in mind the increasing migration around the world with the inward and outward movement of people in a country, the health coverage of citizens as well as...

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant morbidity and mortality, and has devastated economies in many countries. Amongst the groups identified as being at increased risk from COVID-19 are healthcare workers (HCWs) and ethnic minority groups. Emerging evidence suggests HCWs from ethnic minority groups are at increased risk of adverse COVID-19-related physical and mental health outcomes. To date there has been no large-scale analysis of these risks in UK healthcare workers or ancillary workers in healthcare settings, stratified by ethnicity or occupation type, and adjusted for potential confounders. This paper reports the protocol for a prospective longitudinal questionnaire study of UK HCWs, as part of the UK-REACH programme (The United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers). Methods and analysis A baseline...

Racial disparities have been observed in the impacts of COVID-19 in the USA. In the present paper, we used a representative sample of adults in Michigan to examine differences in COVID-19 impacts on Blacks and Whites in four domains: direct, perceived, political, and behavioral. We found that in the initial wave of the outbreak in May 2020, Blacks experienced more severe direct impacts: they were more likely to be diagnosed or know someone who was diagnosed, and more likely to lose their job compared to Whites. In addition, Blacks differed significantly from Whites in their assessment of COVID-19’s threat to public health and the economy, the adequacy of government responses to COVID-19, and the appropriateness of behavioral changes to mitigate COVID-19’s spread. Although in many cases these views of COVID-19 were also associated with political ideology, this association was...

Using the SRQR EQUATOR checklist, we review the gendered burdens and impacts of SARS-CoV-2. Although men are primarily detected to be slightly more vulnerable in succumbing to the ongoing COVID-19 contagion, many researchers have recognized that women are facing more of the devastating brunt in secondary terms. Aside gendered health and social impacts, women are more disproportionately disadvantaged than men in economic terms, as they are predominantly found in the part-time and informal occupations, which have been closed down for months now since the emergence of the current global crisis. Also, since women form the vast proportion of the caregivers within the health sector, their role in handling the pandemic as frontline respondents at the hospitals put them in higher risks of contracting the disease. Despite this higher risk of infection, the peculiar attentions to women’s...

This study analyzed spatiotemporal spread patterns of COVID-19 confirmed cases at the zip code level in the County of San Diego and compared them to neighborhood social and economic factors. We used correlation analysis, regression models, and geographic weighted regression to identify important factors and spatial patterns. We broke down the temporal confirmed case patterns into four stages from 1 April 2020 to 31 December 2020. The COVID-19 outbreak hotspots in San Diego County are South Bay, El Cajon, Escondido, and rural areas. The spatial patterns among different stages may represent fundamental health disparity issues in neighborhoods. We also identified important variables with strong positive or negative correlations in these categories: ethnic groups, languages, economics, and education. The highest association variables were Pop5andOlderSpanish (Spanish-speaking) in Stage 4...

The new coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan, China, started in January 2020 is escalating as a pandemic across the globe in March 2020. It causes unprecedented morbidity and shocked health systems and the supply chains in new epicenters such as Italy, Spain, and the USA, claiming thousands of lives. Meanwhile, the pandemic is reaching swiftly and silently to low-income countries where international media cover less. How likely health outcomes among the countries with different economies may differ during the pandemic has not been reported yet. Methodologically, we conducted an analysis of COVID-19 deaths comparing case fatality rate (CFR) among countries with different income categories, applying COVID-19 global data from the European Centre for Disease Control including 199 countries’ data as of 31 March 2020, in the early phase of the pandemic. We categorized countries into...

Socio-economic factors could impact how epidemics spread. In this study, we investigated the possible effect of several local socio-economic factors on the case count and time course of confirmed Covid-19 cases and Covid-19-related deaths across the twenty one counties of New Jersey. Socio-economic and geographic factors considered included population, percentage of elders in the population, percentage of low-income households, access to food and health facilities and distance to New York. We found that the counties could be clustered into three groups based on (a) the case totals, (b) the total number of deaths, (c) the time course of the cases and (d) the time course of the deaths. The four groupings were very similar to one another and could all be largely explained by the county population, the percentage of low-income population, and the distance of the county from New York. As...

Objective: To investigate the association between deprivation and COVID-19 outcomes in Italy during pre-lockdown, lockdown and post-lockdown periods.Design: Retrospective cohort study.Setting: All municipalities in Italy with less than 50,000 population.Participants: 38,534,169 citizens and 222,875 COVID-19 cases reported to the Italian epidemiological surveillance were assigned to quintiles based on the deprivation index of their municipality of residence.Interventions: The COVID-19 pandemic during pre-lockdown, lockdown and post-lockdown from the 20th of February to the 15th of October of 2020.Main outcome measures: Multilevel negative binomial regression models, adjusting for age, sex, population-density and region of residence were conducted to evaluate the association between deprivation and COVID-19 incidence, case-hospitalisation rate and case-fatality. The association measure...

COVID-19 vaccination acceptance has a key role in mitigating the pandemic. Concern has been raised that vaccination rates will be limited in demographically defined areas of lower income. Israel rapid vaccination campaign may allow to assess these assumptions in real-world and to devise tools for effectively focusing the vaccination efforts. We analyzed the correlation between COVID-19 vaccination rates, socioeconomic status (SES) and active COVID-19 disease burden. We carried out a nationwide study, based on data provided by Ministry of Health of COVID-19 vaccination rates in all municipalities in Israel up to January 12th, 2021. Municipal Vaccination rates of population older than 60 significantly correlated with the socioeconomic status (r=0.83, 95% confidence interval [0.79 to 0.87]). Finally, we established a novel metric for focusing the vaccination efforts based on %...