The association between area deprivation and COVID-19 incidence: a municipality-level spatio-temporal study in Belgium, 2020-2021.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In Belgium, current research on socio-economic inequalities in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis has mainly focused on excess mortality and data from the first epidemiological wave. The current study adds onto this by examining the association between COVID-19 incidence and area deprivation during the first five wave and interwave periods, thus adding a temporal gradient to the analyses.

Methods

We use all confirmed COVID-19 cases between March 2020 and June 2021 in Belgium, aggregated at the municipality-level. These data were collected by the national laboratory-based COVID-19 surveillance system. A level of area deprivation was assigned to each Belgian municipality using data of three socio-economic variables: the share of unemployed persons in the

SUBMITTER: Meurisse M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8976211 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature