Studying the social determinants of COVID-19 in a data vacuum.

ABSTRACT: Race-based and other demographic information on COVID-19 patients is not being collected consistently across provinces in Canada. Therefore, whether the burden of COVID-19 is falling disproportionately on the shoulders of particular demographic groups is relatively unknown. In this article, we first provide an overview of the available geographic and demographic data related to COVID-19. We then make creative use of these existing data to fill the vacuum and identify key demographic risk factors for COVID-19 across Canada's health regions. Drawing on COVID-19 counts and tabular census data, we examine the association between communities' demographic composition and the number of COVID-19 infections. COVID-19 infections are higher in communities with larger shares of Black and low-income re

SUBMITTER: Choi KH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8206942 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature