The burden of COVID-19 is falling disproportionately on racial and ethnic minority groups in nursing home and senior living settings, according to two new data analyses.
During one week in May, for example, nursing homes with high numbers of minority residents had two to four times as many new COVID-19 cases and deaths per facility as those with fewer minorities, reported investigators from the University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY.
The findings are based on data from more than 12,500 facilities in seven states that publicly reported COVID-19 data to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Assisted living communities with larger minority populations also have a higher percentage of COVID cases, though not deaths, another study team from the University of Rochester has found. Not unexpectedly, the researchers also found a higher case count in communities with greater rates of dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and obesity. These COVID-19 risk factors are disproportionately present in vulnerable minority populations, the investigators noted.
The assisted living findings were gleaned from state-reported data for nearly 4,000 assisted living communities, along with residents’ Medicare beneficiary data for 2019.
Ill prepared for a pandemic
Among nursing homes, the outsized COVID-19 case rate disparities between facilities suggest that longstanding, fundamental inequalities are being exacerbated by the pandemic, said researcher Yue Li, Ph.D.
Nursing homes with fewer resources and higher concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities have been shown to have poorer outcomes pre-pandemic, Li and team explained. Nursing homes also remain highly segregated, with large populations of minorities crammed into smaller, underfunded homes, they added.
The assisted living industry, meanwhile, was ill prepared to handle a pandemic, with limited federal oversight, ongoing financial challenges and a roster of increasingly sicker residents contributing to their problems, said researcher Helena Temkin-Greener, Ph.D., M.S.
“Relying on assisted living communities to muster a rigorous response to the COVID-19 pandemic largely on their own is clearly unrealistic,” Tempkin-Greener and colleagues wrote. “[These] communities and their residents urgently need local, state, and the federal governments to pay at least the same level of attention as that given to nursing homes.”
In related pandemic news
Black doctors’ group creates panel to vet COVID-19 vaccines A group of Black physicians has created a task force to independently review regulators’ COVID-19 drug and vaccine decisions and pandemic-related recommendations, reports STAT. The committee was organized by the National Medical Association, a more than century-old Black professional group, and is meant to safeguard against potential unscientific guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, according to the news outlet.
For more context on the University of Rochester assisted living study, read the McKnight’s Senior Living take here.
