Who’s getting hospitalized for coronavirus? These two groups in particular, CDC says

Black Americans and men are hospitalized at disproportionately higher rates for coronavirus, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study looked at hospitalization data for coronavirus patients admitted during March in 14 states.

In the study, 49% of patients were male and 51% were female. But men comprised 54% of hospitalizations.

More men than women are dying from coronavirus, media outlets report. In Italy, men make up 60% of confirmed cases, and more than 70% of people who died in the country are men, The Washington Post reported.

In South Korea, women make up 61% of confirmed cases, but 54% of those who died were men, according to the outlet.

Of the people in the study, 18% were black and 14% Hispanic, but 33% of those hospitalized were black and 8% were Hispanic, showing “that black populations might be disproportionately affected by COVID-19,” researchers wrote.

“This virus is exposing a lot of holes and gaps in our ability to deliver care,” Dr. Taison Bell, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Virginia, told STAT News.

More than half of people with coronavirus and around three-quarters who died in Chicago were black, according to STAT News. Black Americans were also disproportionately infected in North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Connecticut, and Louisiana.

Black Americans are dying at higher rates than white Americans for several reasons, outlets reported.

Black Americans have higher rates of underlying medical conditions, have less access to care, are more likely to work “essential” jobs, don’t get enough information from their governments, and are more at risk due to housing disparities, The Washington Post reported.

People of color have also spoken out about fearing that they’ll be perceived as criminals for wearing face masks, McClatchy News reported.

“We have a lot of examples of the presumed criminality of black men in general,” Trevor Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State University, told CNN. “And then we have the advice to go out in public in something that ... can certainly be read as being criminal or nefarious, particularly when applied to black men.”

The study looked at hospitalizations in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Utah.

This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 12:58 PM with the headline "Who’s getting hospitalized for coronavirus? These two groups in particular, CDC says."