Covid’s racial impact in US clouded by failure to collect race and ethnicity data

Glaring absences in US data despite disproportionate effect on Black, Latino and Native American communities

The full picture of the racial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is clouded by systemic failures to collect race and ethnicity data, even in states that are leaders in promoting health equity.

In California, for example, a key benchmark for reopening and allocating vaccines doesn't fully incorporate race and ethnicity data. Meanwhile, nationally there remain glaring absences in testing and hospitalization data by race and ethnicity a full year after it was shown Covid-19 had a disproportionate effect on Black, Latino and Native American communities.