Racial/Ethnic Disparities in State-Level COVID-19 Vaccination Rates and Their Association with Structural Racism.

Introduction: Racial disparities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality have been well-documented. However, there may also be racial disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates which, if present, would further exacerbate the existing disparities. No previously published articles have identified and quantified potential racial disparities in vaccination throughout the USA at any geography lower than the national level.

Actual Racial/Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Mortality for the Non-Hispanic Black Compared to Non-Hispanic White Population in 353 US Counties and Their Association with Structural Racism.

Introduction: Although disparities in COVID-19 mortality have been documented at the national and state levels, no previous study has quantified such disparities at the county level by explicitly measuring race-specific COVID-19 death rates. In this paper, we quantify the racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 mortality between the non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White populations at the county level by estimating age-adjusted, race-specific death rates.

Methods: Using COVID-19 case data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we calculated crude and indirect age-adjusted COVID-19 mortality rates for the non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black populations in each of 353 counties for the period February 2, 2020, through January 30, 2021.