According to the CDC, COVID-19 has caused nearly 570K deaths in the US as of early April 2020. COVID-19 can cause numerous complications including blood clots, nerve damage, and pneumonia. The impact of COVID-19 can be observed through potential changes in pneumonia and influenza deaths in 2020 compared to previous years. The impact of COVID-19 has varied by race. Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous populations have been affected more by COVID-19 with greater increased excess mortality and decreased life expectancies than the White population. This study has two aims. Aim #1 is to quantify any differences in the weekly deaths due to pneumonia and influenza between 2019 and 2020. Aim #2 is to quantify any differences in the weekly deaths-per-100K due to COVID-19 between the White population and five minority populations. As the data is in time-series format, the analysis was conducted using the ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) method. A specific ARIMA model was created for each comparison such that it had the best fit. Results showed a significant increase in weekly pneumonia deaths in 2020. We can be 95% confident that weekly pneumonia deaths in 2020 increased on average between 2,878 and 7,057 deaths from 2019. There was no significant difference in the weekly influenza deaths between 2019 and 2020. There were no significant differences between weekly deaths-per-100K in the White population and any of the minority groups tested. Despite no significant differences found, there was a large spike in COVID-19 deaths-per-capita in the Black population during the first wave of the pandemic. This indicates that the Black population may have been affected the most during the beginning of the pandemic. As the weekly pneumonia deaths in 2020 followed in trend with COVID-19 weekly deaths, the high increase in the 2020 weekly pneumonia deaths is most likely attributed to the pandemic. Further analysis should be done at the end of the pandemic after all the data has been reported.
Author: Siva Balakrishnan
Faculty Advisor: Saruna Ghimire, Sociology and Gerontology
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