Statistical analysis
We compared demographic characteristics between asthmatic and non-asthmatic inpatients and between hospitalized and non-hospitalized asthmatic patients using the Kruskal–Wallis test for continuous variables and Chi-square test for categorical variables. Binary logistic regression was used to determine the association between asthma and risk of hospitalizations among SARS-CoV-2 positive patients, and ordinal logistic regression was used to determine the association between asthma and COVID-19 disease severity among hospitalized patients. To quantitate the contributions of other known confounding factors to COVID-19 hospitalizations and COVID-19 disease severity, we used three models in each analysis: the first model (unadjusted) univariately analyzed the effects of asthma, the second model used a multivariate analysis adjusted for demographics (age, BMI, ethnicity), and the third model used a multivariate analysis adjusted for both demographics and known COVID-19 related comorbidities associated with more severe disease (diabetes, coronary heart disease, and hypertension).18,19 Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for each model. We evaluated the relationship between laboratory values at admission and COVID-19 disease severity using ordinal regression models as an exploratory analysis. The interaction between each laboratory value and asthma status was also analyzed in the model. Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was applied for laboratory values and false discovery rate (FDR) was controlled at the 10% level. Absolute eosinophil counts from hospitalization were grouped by collection time into admission, during and discharge. Admission eosinophil counts were collected within three days prior to admission, discharge eosinophil counts were collected on the day of discharge, and during hospitalization eosinophil counts were collected between admission and discharge counts. The median value was chosen to use as the per-person count if a patient had multiple values at any of the three timepoints. A mixed effect model was constructed to assess change in eosinophil counts during hospitalization in those patients that did not receive systemic steroids.  In the sub-cohort analysis among those enrolled in a prospective, longitudinal study (NCT# 04373148), the time from symptom onset to resolution was compared between asthmatic and non-asthmatic patients using the Kaplan-Meier curve and log-rank test. All analyses were performed in R language (version 4.0.3) and packages stats (version 4.0.3), ordinal (version 2019.12.10).