Black and Latino patients were significantly less likely to receive COVID-19 antiviral prescriptions than white patients, and a new study suggests that where and how they received care played a major role. Published in JAMA Network Open, the study analyzed data from over 200,000 patients across a New England health system and found that clinic- and system-level factors explained up to half of the treatment gap.
Black patients were 10.8 percentage points less likely, and Latino patients 9.8 points less likely, to receive antivirals within a week of testing positive. Even after adjusting for clinical and public health factors, disparities persisted. But when researchers accounted for encounter-level details—such as test type, telehealth use, and clinic site—more than half the gap for Black patients and nearly 40% for Latino patients was explained.
Patients of color were less likely to be diagnosed using home or in-clinic antigen tests and less likely to access care through telehealth—both associated with higher prescription rates. Clinics serving mostly Black and Latino patients were also less likely to use these tools and were 8.2 percentage points less likely to prescribe antivirals overall.
The findings point to systemic inequities in care delivery. “Unless policies and programs are enacted to ensure resources are equitably distributed across all populations, racial health inequities will persist and potentially widen over time,” wrote editorialists from the University of Pennsylvania.
See “Clinic- and System-Level Factors Drive Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Antiviral Prescribing, Study Finds” (July 7, 2025)