Demographics of Patients with Cancer & COVID-19 Disease
Update from March 3, 2021
Patients with Cancer and COVID-19: We identified patients by searching for active patients with cancer who fit at least one of the following criteria:
- Positive laboratory tests for SARS-CoV-2 or other β-coronaviruses (e.g., SARS, MERS)
- ICD-10 diagnosis codes for COVID-19 disease
- ICD-10 diagnosis codes for viral pneumonia attributable to ‘Other coronavirus’ or of ‘Unknown etiology’ from Feb 1, 2020 – October 1, 2020.
An active patient with cancer is one who has an ICD-9 or ICD-10 diagnosis code for a malignant neoplasm and at least two clinical encounter records (e.g., a clinical visit and/or drug administration) in the practice’s EHR in the 12 month period ending on the date of analysis. All data is de-identified prior to analysis.
Of the CancerLinQ practices providing regular data updates, 44 practices provided either testing information for SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 disease (criterion 1 above) and/or diagnostic reports of COVID-19 disease (criteria 2 or 3). Of these, 35 practices had at least 1 patient with apparent COVID-19 disease and cancer.
We then summarized the distribution of the patients with cancer and COVID-19 by race, gender, ethnicity, age, and primary cancer diagnosis. For comparison purposes, we have included distributions of all active patients with cancer, denoted as ‘Underlying Cancer Population’ from the 44 practices above as well as similar distributions of COVID-19 cancer patients that have died from any cause.
Population sizes for COVID-19 Cancer Cases and Underlying Cancer Population are 7,018 and 676,112 respectively.
Results:




