Who is the Other?

Some States are Not Publishing COVID-19 Data for All Racial Categories

What happens when COVID-19 patients from specific communities of color are categorized into the “other” category? As a statistics master's student with the NYU Digital Interests Lab, I recently investigated how states used classifications in their COVID open data sets. The following statistics are based on the 2018 census data and June 2020 analysis of the available data sets.

One in thirty-five people in the United States has tested positive for COVID this year. We have heard a lot about the racial disparities revealed by the pandemic. Latino, Native American, and Native Alaskan communities have tested positive for COVID 2.8 times as often as White people. Black and Asian communities have tested positive 2.6 and 1.1 times as often as White people, respectively. The disparities for hospitalizations are even more significant, at 4.6 times higher. This may be attributed to a variety of reasons.

Since we see disparities in contracting COVID, we must have racial data for all patients. However, some states are not reporting public COVID data about particular communities of color. Twenty-five states listed “other” as the only option for one of the main racial subgroups in their COVID data. Eleven additional states listed “other” as the only option for mixed-race people. You can see these populations in Figure 1.

Figure 1: COVID Patients Categorized as Other by Hope Muller.

Oklahoma, for example, is reporting patients from the Latino community in the “other” category. There are 429,079 Latino people in Oklahoma. That is more than 10% of their state’s population. There have been 120,193 positive COVID cases in Oklahoma. Yet, with their current reporting system, we have no way of knowing how COVID has impacted the Latino population in their state or what inequities that may reveal.

Meanwhile, in Florida, 816,700 people have tested positive for COVID. They are not reporting aggregated racial data for people of Asian descent, Native American or Alaskan descent, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Island descent, or people from a mix of racial descents. Those groups account for 1,058,270 people in the state of Florida. See Figure 2.

Figure 2: Who is the Other by Hope Muller.

In total, about seven million people of color would be bundled into the “other” racial category across the country. This implies one out of every 20 people of color’s race may be invisible to the public in our COVID data.

We cannot recognize the degree of disparity in our country when we categorize people groups in this manner.

Without access to comprehensive race-specific data for every state, we are limited in understanding the current inequities in our society and healthcare system. Since some states are poorly reporting COVID data, we cannot fully understand its impact on communities of color. Given the insufficient classification of COVID data, communities of color continue to be further marginalized in our society. Unless states adopt a more thorough method of ensuring race data for patients, these inequities will be perpetuated in our healthcare system.