IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON DIFFERENT POPULATION GROUPS: A CASE STUDY OF NEW YORK CITY

2020 has been an unprecedented year. This is mainly due to Covid-19, an infectious disease that ruthlessly spread its sickness throughout the world. This pandemic had a major effect on people’s lives, private businesses, academics, and other industries. Much was and still is unknown about the deadly virus and it is necessary to learn more about the virus as a step towards controlling it. Informing people with more information about COVID-19 would help them protect themselves and their families against the pandemic. There is increasing evidence that elderly population was disproportionally affected by COVID-19. One common myth since the beginning of the virus has been that racial and ethnic minority groups are at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19. This study aims to investigate the increased risk of morbidity and mortality during COVID-19 in population of New York City because it was an epicenter of this pandemic for a while. The study was conducted using the data from all five boroughs (county) of NYC: Queens, Bronx, Manhattan (New York), Brooklyn (Kings) and Staten Island (Richmond). Available health statistical data were thoroughly analyzed to test our hypothesis that communities with elderly and/or minority ethnic groups would show the highest respond to COVID-19 to develop the risk of sickness and dying. The population of different age groups data was used to construct the several maps/plots of age structure and different ethnic group for each borough. Updated COVID-19 health data were obtained from New York State Department of Health to improve our understanding the individuals and communities respond to COVID-19 during the global pandemic. Preliminary results reported that despite having highest proportion of elderly population (64+) in Brooklyn consistently showed the relatively lower incidental cases and deaths from COVID-19. However, ethnic minority groups including Hispanic/Latino and black/African-American consistently showed the highest positive cases and deaths from COVID-19. This preliminary report suggest that data suggest that there might be additional factors that contribute to increased risk from COVID-19, warrants further study.