Study: Nursing homes with predominant minority populations bore bigger COVID impacts

An analysis of data from 211 Connecticut nursing homes found that facilities that cared for mainly racial and ethnic minority residents had higher levels of COVID-19 illnesses and deaths. A team based at the University of Rochester in New York reported their findings today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

The 10-week time span they focused on was Apr 12, 2020, to Jun 19, 2020. Authors noted that Connecticut is one of the few states that kept weekly counts of COVID cases and deaths back to April 2020. In addition to state department data on nursing home cases and deaths, they also used Brown University data on nursing home characteristics to categorize the nursing homes as having low, medium, medium-high, and high proportions of ethnic and racial minorities.

Aside from finding that facilities caring for predominantly minority residents had more COVID illnesses and deaths, the study showed that differences became more pronounced over time. Differences between low and high minority proportions increased by 25% to 30% from week 1 to week 10, and in week 10, incidence was 54% higher in facilities with high proportions of minority residents, with the fatality rate 117% higher.

Researchers said their results confirm the findings of earlier studies and that similar disparities have been noted before the COVID pandemic, a sign that systemic disparities still exist. They said nursing homes serving minority populations can have resource challenges, such as lack of testing and limited capacity to respond to outbreaks. Also, the team said workers in the facilities are people of color and immigrants, who are known to contract COVID at higher rates than the rest of the population.

"The increasing racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 outcomes documented in our study can serve as an important benchmark for future studies that continue to track nursing-home COVID-19 outcomes as the pandemic evolves," the group wrote.
Jun 16 Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol abstract

Parents, women medical faculty more likely to suffer during pandemic

Parenting and gender are each associated with a higher likelihood to leave, reduce hours, or pass on leadership opportunities, according to a survey of academic medical faculty yesterday in JAMA Network Open conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From Sep 1 to 25, 2020, 1,186 medical, graduate, and health professional school faculty at the University of Southwest Texas in Dallas responded to the survey about their thoughts before and after the COVID-19 pandemic started. Most respondents were women (54.7%) or White (57.5%). Parents of those 18 or younger made up 55.0% of the cohort, of which 55.7% had to help with distance learning during the pandemic on their own or with a partner. The researchers note that not all respondents answered every question.

Overall, the pandemic is correlated with an increased consideration of leaving (23% vs 14%) and reducing work hours (29% vs 22%). Women were more likely than men to consider reducing their hours before the pandemic began (28% vs 12%); after the pandemic began, they were more likely to consider leaving or reducing their hours (28% vs 15% and 40% vs 13%, respectively). Faculty who were parents were more likely to consider leaving or reducing employment after the pandemic started than before (29% vs 17% and 40% vs 24%, respectively). Women with children versus women without were also more likely to consider leaving since the pandemic began (35% vs 17% before COVID-19).

The researchers add that faculty who were parents or women were more likely to decline leadership opportunities before and after the pandemic, with point percentage differences ranging from 14 to 24.

"The association of both gender and parenting with increased perceived work-life stress may disproportionately decrease the long-term retention and promotion of junior and midcareer women faculty," the researchers write. "Without true change in the culture of medicine to support work-life integration and family-friendly work policies, further disillusionment in academic careers may occur and threaten the future of academic medicine as an institution."
Jun 15 JAMA Netw Open study

H5N8 strikes birds in Albania and China

Two countries reported more detections of highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza in birds, Albania in backyard poultry and China in waterfowl, according to the latest notifications from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

Albania reported outbreaks on three farms that began between May 21 and Jan 4. The events occurred in Tirana County in the central part of the country, Kukes County in the northeast, and Durres County in the west. Taken together, the virus killed 158 of 590 susceptible birds. The source of the virus isn't known, but contact with wild species is suspected.

Elsewhere, China reported an H5N8 outbreak in wild birds at a nature park in Shaanxi province in the country's northwest. The outbreak started on May 28, and the virus has killed 4,249 black-necked grebes.
Jun 16 OIE report on H5N8 in Albania
Jun 15 OIE report on H5N8 in China