GenderSci Lab COVID Project

Our newest and most extensive COVID paper is out now in the journal Social Science and Medicine. The paper—the first longitudinal study to quantify variation in COVID-19 gender/sex disparities across U.S. states—presents an analysis of the data gathered by the GenderSci Lab’s COVID-19 project. Analyzing 55 weeks of sex-disaggregated data derived from our US Gender/Sex COVID-19 Data Tracker, we show that sex disparities in COVID-19 mortality are not large, stable, or consistent across time and place. We explain the paper’s main findings in a blog post.

Our Communication Guide can help researchers and journalists discuss gender/sex differences in COVID-19 outcomes.

Our Gender/Sex Disparities in COVID-19 Outcomes Teaching Guide and Toolkit is an open access resources for educators who want to address gender and other demographic social variables in their courses.

To learn more about the GenderSci Lab’s COVID Project, see our Introduction post and accompanying op-ed in The New York Times.

Read our Matters Arising piece published in Nature in Sept. 2021, which dismantles a prominent claim asserting significant sex differences in immune response to COVID-19. On our blog, we walk through our analysis of the problems with the sex differences study.

See our US State COVID-19 Report Card, where we reported on available socially relevant data in US COVID deaths and our accompanying Health Affairs blog and GenderSci Lab blog on why such data is critical to understand COVID disparities.

Check out The New York Times article that mentions our tracker and discusses the disproportionate impacts of Covid-19 across different populations.

The cases graph shows the percentage of reported cases that have been classified as female or male in each state.

The deaths graph shows the percentage of reported deaths that have been classified as female or male in each state. 

Rates are measures that present the number of sex-disaggregated cases or deaths in each state scaled to the female and the male population of that state. 

The case rates graph shows the number of cases registered among women and men, per 100,000 individuals of that sex living in each state. 

The crude mortality rates graph shows the number of deaths registered among women and men, per 100,000 individuals of that sex living in each state.

The age-adjusted mortality rates disaggregated by sex are mortality rates that take into account the age structure of each state. 

This is important because older age is a risk factor for COVID-19 mortality, but the age distribution and the sex distribution within age groups vary across states. Age-adjusted mortality rates are weighted averages that seek to adjust for this by taking into account the age distribution of the population of each state. 

Rates are reported per 100,000 population.

Information in this table was accurate as of the date listed in the table. Due to retroactive updating of some state data sources, information may have changed. All research and publication conducted with this data should be validated.

Statement of intellectual labor

Tarrant collected and continues to collect these data, designed the data tracking page, and embedded links. Rushovich calculated the rates and created the graphs on this page. Danielsen contributed to data validation and rate calculations and drafted the methods. Danielsen drafted the text of this page and the GenderSci Lab as a whole contributed edits. Capri D'Souza, Kai DeJesus, Kai Jillson, Kelsey Ichikawa, May Moorefield, and Kashfia Rahman contributed to weekly data collection and validation. Nancy Krieger, PhD and Jarvis T. Chen, ScD provided feedback and assistance with the methodology and framing of the analyses.

Suggested citation:

“US Gender/Sex COVID-19 Data Tracker.” (2020) Harvard GenderSci Lab. Retrieved from https://www.genderscilab.org/gender-and-sex-in-covid19. [Date of retrieval]