Investigating demographic and socioeconomic disparities among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the United States

Racial minorities and vulnerable communities in the United States have been considerably affected by the outbreak of COVID-19. The study investigated how unequally distributed the proportions of different groups by race, gender, and education levels are in the cohort of patients who tested positive for COVID-19. We analyzed demographic characteristics of the patients with COVID-19 in a large-scale health record database through descriptive analyses. The study showed that significant differences in the proportions of demographic and social categories existed by conducting the statistical analysis, Chi-square goodness of fit test. Beyond the descriptive statistics, this understanding of demographic characteristics of patients in a commercial electronic health records system can be a baseline for in-depth research on race, gender, and socioeconomic status disparities in access and use of healthcare services during a pandemic