American communities of color have shouldered a disproportionate share of the COVID-19 pandemic's burden. For instance, at peak, Hispanic/Latino Americans experienced a weekly all-cause death burden 130.9% in excess of previous years. Not all excess deaths are directly attributable to COVID-19—there is emerging evidence that delays in care associated with pandemic-related closures and shortages also contributed to increased mortality among all demographics1. The phenomenon of increased death burden among American minority groups reflects a higher COVID-19 disease burden, poorer access to quality health care services, and increased prevalence of comorbid conditions for COVID-19 relative to White Americans.
The following visualizations show weekly all-cause deaths by race and ethnicity over time, from 2014 to mid 2022.
Data is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics (CDC-NCHS). Find the raw data here. Names of racial and ethnic groups presented reflect those used by the CDC-NCHS. Data in recent weeks are incomplete--only 60% of death records are submitted to CDC-NCHS within 10 days of the date of death, and completeness varies by jurisdiction. Video files of each image can be found in the directory 'mp4'.
These visualizations were submitted to the 2021 Data Visualization Contest, hosted by Northwestern IT Research Computing Services and Northwestern Libraries.
