COVID-19 Data Dispatch

Tag: race & ethnicity data

  • Only 19 states report vaccinations by race/ethnicity

    Only 19 states report vaccinations by race/ethnicity

    Every week, I come into your inbox and I say, the vaccine rollout is going badly.  And you’re probably like, yeah, Betsy, I know, it’s on the news every single day.

    You probably don’t need me to tell you about the announcement this past Tuesday, from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, telling states to stop saving their second doses and start prioritizing all adults over the age of 65… or the Washington Post scoop this past Friday, revealing that states couldn’t actually vaccinate more people because the federal vaccine reserve was already used up. (I salute all the policy reporters following this madness. Seriously.)

    So instead, today, I’m focusing on a vaccination issue that hasn’t gotten as much press: who is actually getting vaccinated? On the national level, we largely can’t answer this question, thanks to a lack of demographic data.

    While the CDC’s vaccination tracker has seen some upgrades recently (such as the inclusion of people receiving two doses and downloadable data), it does not report any information on the race, ethnicity, age, gender, or occupation of those Americans who have gotten shots. And the data aren’t much better at the state level, according to recent analysis from the COVID Tracking Project. 

    The COVID Tracking Project analysis discusses 17 states which report race and/or ethnicity data for vaccine recipients. Since the post was published, two more states—Missouri and West Virginia—have started reporting such data. Still, just reporting these data isn’t sufficient. Alice Goldfarb, Kara Schechtman, Charlotte Minsky, and other Project volunteers who compiled detailed annotations on the vaccine metrics reported by each state found that, even when states do report demographic data, each state uses vastly different categories, making it difficult to compare or combine this state-level information into a useful national dataset.

    See the CDD’s updated annotations on both state and national vaccine data sources here.

    Using the limited data that are available, though, we can still see that the vaccination effort thus far is incredibly inequitable—despite government promises to prioritize vulnerable populations.

    White Americans are getting vaccinated at much higher rates than Black Americans, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of state data published yesterday. Reporters Hannah Recht and Lauren Weber discuss access issues and mistrust of the healthcare system—tied to systematic racism against Black Americans seeking healthcare—as reasons why Black Americans may be left behind.

    But the disparities so far, at a stage of the vaccine rollout that has largely prioritized healthcare workers, means that both national and local public health agencies have a lot of work to do:

    “My concern now is if we don’t vaccinate the population that’s highest-risk, we’re going to see even more disproportional deaths in Black and brown communities,” said Dr. Fola May, a UCLA physician and health equity researcher. “It breaks my heart.”

    In New York—a state which finally released a vaccine dashboard today, but is not yet reporting demographic data—vaccination trends by hospital suggest a similar pattern. The hospitals with the highest shares of vaccinated workers are, by and large, private hospitals located in Manhattan. The hospitals with fewer vaccinated workers, on the other hand, include those located in Harlem, Brooklyn, and other working-class neighborhoods.

    Data are also lacking for long-term care facilities. The CDC reports total vaccine doses administered in these facilities (which include nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other care homes). But a national total is unhelpful in analyzing where states have been most successful at getting vaccines to this high-priority population. A COVID Tracking Project analysis, published on Thursday, found vaccine data for LTCs in only seven states. South Carolina is the only state releasing detailed data on individual facilities.

    Meanwhile, CVS has published a state-by-state dataset of LTC vaccinations administered by this pharmacy chain. The COVID Tracking Project reports that Walgreens may release a similar dataset. It seems pretty wild that independent pharmacy chains are reporting more detailed vaccine data than the federal government itself—until you remember, well, how data reporting has gone this entire pandemic.

    Vaccination data, right now, are about as messy as testing data were back in spring 2020. Every state is doing its own thing, and the federal government has yet to provide sufficiently detailed information for meaningful analysis. Readers: I urge you to push for better vaccine demographic data, both in your own region and nationally.

    A few more vaccine data updates:

    • Sources and updates, November 12
      Sources and updates for the week of November 12 include new vaccination data, a rapid test receiving FDA approval, treatment guidelines, and more.
    • How is the CDC tracking the latest round of COVID-19 vaccines?
      Following the end of the federal public health emergency in May, the CDC has lost its authority to collect vaccination data from all state and local health agencies that keep immunization records. As a result, the CDC is no longer providing comprehensive vaccination numbers on its COVID-19 dashboards. But we still have some information about this year’s vaccination campaign, thanks to continued CDC efforts as well as reporting by other health agencies and research organizations.
    • Sources and updates, October 8
      Sources and updates for the week of October 8 include new papers about booster shot uptake, at-home tests, and Long COVID symptoms.
    • COVID source shout-out: Novavax’s booster is now available
      This week, the FDA authorized Novavax’s updated COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s why some people are excited to get Novavax’s vaccine this fall, as opposed to Pfizer’s or Moderna’s.

  • Racism is a public health threat

    This week, the American Medical Association (AMA) announced that the association recognizes racism as a public health threat. The association is adopting a new policy which acknowledges systemic racism, cultural racism, and interpersonal racism as barriers to healthcare for many Americans and as threats to equitable public health across the country. Although the policy does not specifically address COVID-19, it speaks to the impact that America’s racist history and healthcare system has had in making it more likely for Black Americans to become infected with the coronavirus and suffer worse health outcomes.

    “The AMA recognizes that racism negatively impacts and exacerbates health inequities among historically marginalized communities. Without systemic and structural-level change, health inequities will continue to exist, and the overall health of the nation will suffer,” said AMA Board Member Willarda V. Edwards, M.D., M.B.A.

    I highlighted this decision because, in order to address a public health threat, the threat must be tracked with good, complete data. In the several months I’ve worked on the COVID Racial Data Tracker, I have seen how public health agencies often push demographic data on COVID-19 into inaccessible charts or hard-to-find reports, or do not even report these data at all. In other words, it may be difficult for many people of color in the U.S. to find crucial information on how the pandemic is impacting their communities.

    Many states have greatly increased their demographic reporting on COVID-19 cases, deaths, and other metrics since the spring, and states have supported initiatives to serve minority communities. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. The AMA’s decision signals that the medical community is committed to dismantling the threat racism poses to American public health. Journalists, science communicators, and other community leaders must join in that work.

    If you’d like to advocate for better demographic data in your state: you can see the disparities using the COVID Racial Data Tracker’s Infection and Mortality charts, and you can reach out to your state’s leadership with a custom contact form.

  • COVID source callout: Missouri

    COVID source callout: Missouri

    In some states, if you would like to see the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths for different racial and ethnic groups, you can simply look at tables clearly presented on the state’s public health dashboard.

    In Missouri, it is not so easy. Missouri presents its race and ethnicity data in pie charts, showing the percents of cases and deaths that are reported in each category. A lot of states use this type of pie chart presentation, as it draws attention to the most impacted groups. But pie charts have a significant drawback: smaller demographic groups, such as Native American/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, are relegated to tiny slices that are nearly impossible to see. These groups may be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, but the pie chart makes them seem unimportant.

    Screenshot of Missouri’s demographic COVID-19 data tab, taken on November 8.

    It takes several rounds of hovering, recording percentages, and running calculations to determine COVID-19 case and death numbers for those smaller racial groups in Missouri. Demographic data should not be this complicated.

  • New, shareable graphics from the COVID Racial Data Tracker

    New, shareable graphics from the COVID Racial Data Tracker

    Twice a week, the COVID Tracking Project’s COVID Racial Data Tracker compiles and standardizes demographic data from every U.S. state and territory. I am intimately familiar with this work because I’m one of those volunteers. I watch the numbers tick up and, inevitably, paint a clear picture of how centuries of racism have left people of color more vulnerable to this pandemic.

    This week, the COVID Tracking Project’s web design team launched a new feature that makes our demographic data more accessible to readers. It’s called Infection and Mortality by Race and Ethnicity: simply click on a state or territory, and the feature will return a chart that compares COVID-19 cases and deaths to that region’s population.

    Here’s the chart for the U.S. as a whole:

    Adjusting case and death values by population makes it much easier to see disparity. For example, while Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are a relatively small fraction of America’s population, they are much more likely to contract the novel coronavirus. Meanwhile, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and indigenous Americans are more likely to die of the disease.

    These charts are easy to share on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and the graphics will be updated automatically when our data updates twice a week. Volunteers who work on this part of the Project are hoping that these charts can make it easier for people to draw attention to COVID-19 disparity in their communities, as well as to the data that are still missing in many states. For example, here’s me yelling about New York.

    Check out the chart for your state, and if you feel compelled, share it. We need people talking about these data in order to drive change. (Also: shout-out to product lead Neesha Wadhwa and other design folks working behind the scenes at the COVID Tracking Project who made these charts possible!)

  • Help advocate for better COVID-19 demographic data

    The COVID Racial Data Tracker, a collaboration between the COVID Tracking Project and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, collects COVID-19 race and ethnicity data from 49 states and the District of Columbia. We compile national statistics and compare how different populations are being impacted across the country.

    But there are a lot of gaps in our dataset. We can only report what the states report, and many states have issues: for example, 93% of cases in Texas do not have any reported demographic information, and West Virginia has not reported deaths by race since May 20.

    A new form on the COVID Tracking Project website allows you to help us advocate for better quality data. Simply select your state, then use the contact information and suggested script to get in touch with your governor. States with specific data issues (such as Texas and West Virginia) have customized scripts explaining those problems.

    If you try this out for your state, please use the bottom of the form to let us know how it went!

    MORE STATE DATA