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:

  1. Positive laboratory tests for SARS-CoV-2 or other β-coronaviruses (e.g., SARS, MERS)
  2. ICD-10 diagnosis codes for COVID-19 disease
  3. 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:

Figure showing results by gender
Figure 1: Distribution of gender for COVID-19 Cancer Cases and Underlying Cancer Population at the CancerLinQ practices reporting COVID-19 results since Feb 1, 2020.
Figure showing results by race
Figure 2: Distribution of race for COVID-19 Cancer Cases and Underlying Cancer Population at the CancerLinQ practices reporting COVID-19 results since Feb 1, 2020. We have combined ‘Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander’ and ‘American Indian or Alaska Native’ into ‘Other race’ in the main chart; the inset has a breakout of ‘American Indian or Alaska Native’ and ‘Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander’.
Figure showing results by ethnicity
Figure 3: Distribution of ethnicity for COVID-19 Cancer Cases and Underlying Cancer Population at the CancerLinQ practices reporting COVID-19 results since Feb 1, 2020. 
Figure showing distribution of age at COVID-19 diagnosis for COVID-19 cancer cases and underlying cancer population
Figure 4: Distribution of age for COVID-19 Cancer Cases and Underlying Cancer Population at the CancerLinQ practices reporting COVID-19 results since Feb 1, 2020.
Figure showing results by primary malignancy
Figure 5: Primary neoplastic diagnosis for COVID-19 Cancer Cases and Underlying Cancer Population at the CancerLinQ practices reporting COVID-19 results since Feb 1, 2020. Diagnoses present in 0 or small numbers of COVID-19 patients have been aggregated into ‘Other’.