States that ended protections banning evictions in the spring and summer of 2020 likely led to hundreds of thousands of additional COVID-19 cases and thousands of deaths from the coronavirus, according to a new UCLA study.

The study , published Monday in the American Journal of Epidemiology, looked at 43 states that had eviction moratoriums from March to September 2020, and compared COVID-19 cases in those that lifted moratoriums allowing renters to be evicted with those that kept protections in place.

The UCLA researchers found that about four months after evictions were allowed to resume, states saw on average twice as many COVID-19 cases and five times more deaths from the virus. Ending eviction protections, the study estimated, led to some 433,000 excess COVID-19 cases and about 10,000 additional deaths by September 2020.

Evictions disproportionately affect people of color, especially women of color . Black and Latinx people are three times as likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 as white people, and twice as likely to die .

Its always important in talking about evictions and housing insecurity to say its not something that affects all people equally, study co-author Kate Leifheit told HuffPost in a November interview. People of color and low-income folks are at the highest risk of eviction and theyre also at highest risk of negative COVID outcomes.

Leifheit noted that the increase in cases and deaths associated with eviction would exacerbate existing racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.