7/27/2023 0 Comments Download army worm mothsThe hardest hit neighborhoods are the ones with the most essential workers, largest household sizes and highest rates of poverty.” ![]() “Our risk maps revealed a huge divide between the east side and the west side of Interstate 35. “We set out to identify parts of the city that suffered the worst throughout the pandemic,” said Spencer Fox, a first author on the paper who is now at the University of Georgia and associate director of the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the time of the study. The researchers estimated the changing burden of COVID-19 across the city in relation to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index, which combines several factors, including the size of minority populations, education levels and household characteristics. This included the early days of the pandemic and the introduction of vaccines but not the emergence of the delta and omicron variants. The study focused on March 2020 through June 2021. Scientists analyzed anonymized public health and hospitalization data from across Travis County and looked at several factors, including age and the ZIP codes where people lived. “These disparities persisted into late 2021, long after public health measures were taken to protect vulnerable populations.” “As we reflect back on lessons learned from COVID, this study highlights that inequities within major cities, including Austin, led to much higher levels of COVID infection yet much lower rates of COVID detection in disadvantaged neighborhoods,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, professor of integrative biology and director of the Center for Pandemic Decision Science. People living in ZIP codes in East Austin, where social vulnerability is high, were much more likely to be infected and end up in the hospital yet much less likely to have their infections reported than people living in historically better-off ZIP codes on the west side, a team of epidemiologists reports in a study out today in PLOS Computational Biology. The findings could offer clues to address health disparities in future outbreaks and public health crises. city suffered infection rates up to 10 times as high as their counterparts in wealthier neighborhoods, research from The University of Texas at Austin has found. ![]() AUSTIN, Texas - During the COVID-19 pandemic’s first 15 months, people in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in a large U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |