The Center for Disease Control has indicated is that there are a lot of holes in data on COVID cases and deaths by race and ethnicity, whether there be many unreported statistics or complete datasets missing related to race. In a situation where data is pertinent for better understanding the impacts of the outbreak and bettering the resources available for response, this missing race-related data has limited the racial and ethnical perspective on the impacts of the disease, therefore leaving greater potential for racial disparities in what resources are made available.
To begin to bridge the holes created by missing racial data in North Carolina in order to expand the resources that could be used to catalyze more equal decisions of COVID response resource allocation in terms of racial communities, we have provided analyses of racial disparities in overall cases and accessible testing sites.
Ratio of Death: Cases by Race
What We've Found
This percentage of cases resulting in death serves as an indication of how effective the response for positive-tested COVID patients is (higher % of deaths = less effective response).
With the focus on Black and White communities in NC, the trends of this percentage changing over time for each show a steeper decrease in percentage over time amongst White communities. Despite having had a higher percentage of deaths in the earlier months of the outbreak, there was a steep decrease as time went on while the trend for Black communities has a much slower decrease with current percentages higher than in White communities. This is in support of the findings by the Center for Control Disease in that there is a clear difference in racial impacts of COVID in multiple states, making it important to distribute response resources in a way that is easily accessible to all.