Impact of Residential Neighborhood and Race/Ethnicity on Outcomes of Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 in the Bronx

  1. Dwayvania Miller
  2. Amara Sarwal
  3. Bo Yu
  4. Edgar Gomez
  5. Victor Perez-Gutierrez
  6. Marcia Gossai
  7. Elisenda Valdez
  8. Astrid Mendez
  9. Sarah Chaudry
  10. Usha Venugopal
  11. Vihren Dimitrov
  12. Moiz Kasubhai
  13. Vidya Menon

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Abstract

The socially vulnerable have been most affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic, similar to the aftermath of any major disaster. Racial and social minorities are experiencing a disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of residential location/community and race/ethnicity on outcomes of COVID-19 infection among hospitalized patients within the Bronx. This was a single center retrospective observational cohort study that included SARS-CoV2 positive adult residents of the Bronx (stratified as residents of South Bronx vs Rest of Bronx) hospitalized between March-May 2020. Data extracted from hospital electronic medical records included residential addresses, race, comorbidities, and insurance details. Comorbidity burden other clinical and laboratory details were also assessed to determine their correlation to COVID-19 severity of illness and outcomes of mortality and length of stay.

As expected, the COVID-19 pandemic differentially affected outcomes in those in the more socially disadvantaged area of the South Bronx versus the rest of the Bronx borough. Residents of the South Bronx had a significantly higher comorbidity burden and had public insurance to access medical care in comparison to the remainder of the Bronx. Interestingly, for the patient population studied there was no observed difference in 30-day mortality by race/ethnicity among those infected with COVID- 19 in spite of the increased disease burden observed.

This adds an interesting perspective to the current literature, and highlights the need to address the social/economic factors contributing to health access disparity to reduce the adverse impact of COVID-19 in these communities.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.09.21249515: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    IBM SPSS v22 for Windows was used for analysis.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.09.21249515v1 on medRxiv