Georgia doesn’t know race of 62% of people who tested positive for COVID-19. Why?
The Georgia Department of Public Health reports the state doesn’t know the race of more than 60% of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 9.
State health officials began reporting the race of COVID-19 patients Wednesday. At that time, Georgia had 10,204 confirmed coronavirus cases and 370 deaths.
By Thursday at noon, that rose to 10,566 cases and 379 deaths across the state.
The racial breakdown for confirmed cases reported by the state Wednesday was:
62.67% unknown (about 6,395 people)
20.54% black (2,096)
15.34% white (1,565)
1.45% other (148)
This is what it looked like 17 hours later in the noon Thursday update:
- 62.65% unknown (about 6,620 people)
- 20.62% black (2,179)
- 15.27% white (1,613)
- 1.46% other (154)
According to 2019 Census estimates, 60.2% of Georgia’s population is white. Black people account for 32.4% of the state’s population. Hispanic or Latino people make up 9.8%.
The state has not reported the race of people who’ve died from COVID-19. As of April 9, the state only reports their county of residence, their age, their sex and if they had an underlying health condition.
In a press conference Wednesday, Kathleen Toomey, the commissioner of the state’s health department, said the state has collected racial information since the very first cases were reported. However, testing facilities often don’t include the race of a patient in the coronavirus data they report to the state.
As the number of state-run testing sites increase, Toomey said state health officials will be able to better collect demographic data, such as race, from patients.
“We are actively working with lab providers and medical providers to ensure that it is included,” she said. “The best data we have are for those who are hospitalized. ...We will get better and better data as we go along.”
Race isn’t the only information missing from some of the coronavirus data reported to state health officials. As of Thursday at noon, the counties for 1,020 confirmed cases and eight deaths were listed as unknown. Those numbers account for a large portion of the state’s overall cases.
Only Atlanta’s Fulton County has more confirmed coronavirus cases. It ties the number of cases in Albany’s Dougherty County. Those number of cases and deaths from unknown counties grows or shrinks with each report.
“The unknowns, for the most part, are information not completed by the facility entering the data,” Nancy Nydam, spokesperson for the state health department, said in a previous email. “And yes, we have to go back and review the record and contact the facility to attempt to get the information. Someone is physically making phone calls to track it down.”
USA Today reports that Black people are dying at much higher rates than others in some major American cities, but most federal officials and states are not keeping track of or releasing racial data.
It’s unclear if that is the trend in Georgia because racial data hasn’t been consistently reported to date, Toomey said.
“We’re certainly seeing higher rates in places like Albany.” she said. “It’s hard to make a firm analysis without consistent data.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 12:47 PM with the headline "Georgia doesn’t know race of 62% of people who tested positive for COVID-19. Why?."