TABLE 2.

Quantitative data synthesis for the association of background characteristics and hospitalisation of COVID‐19

Background characteristic	Number of studies	Total cases	OR	CI	p value a	I 2 (%)	Tau2
Ethnicity/race
Black versus non‐Black	27	377,636	1.33	1.04–1.70	0.03	99.2%	0.37
Hispanic versus non‐Hispanic	22	361,413	1.01	0.76–1.33	0.97	99.2%	0.39
White versus non‐White	27	764,312	0.92	0.80–1.05	0.22	97.3%	0.10
Sex
Male versus female	38	785,233	1.59	1.43–1.76	<0.001	95.4%	0.08
Smoking
Current and former versus never	24	740,896	1.59	1.34–1.88	<0.001	96.8%	0.13

Note: Each Ethnicity/race category was used as a binary variable due to the variability of how ethnic groups and races were captured across all 40 studies (i.e., not mutually exclusive groups).

Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ratio.

^a p < 0.05.