A Statistics Canada study has found that some racialized populations in Canada had significantly higher death rates from COVID-19.
The analysis says the death rate from COVID-19 was much higher for racialized people compared to non-racialized people. He found 31 deaths per 100,000 for racialized people and 22 deaths per 100,000 for the non-racialized population.
“It confirms what many of us had believed, how COVID has primarily targeted racialized people,” said Dr. Anna Banerji, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. .
Black people had the highest death rate: more than twice that of non-racialized residents. It was followed by those who identify as South Asian and Chinese.
However, the Chinese had a death rate similar to non-racialized people.
The study estimated COVID-19 death rates in Canada in 2020 and compared them to recently released census data from 2016. Only South Asians, Chinese and black people were analyzed due to restrictions of the sample size, according to the study.
Nicole Aitken, an analyst at Statistics Canada in Ottawa, said the findings were limited because the researchers did not have data on people living in nursing homes or other institutional living systems. In the early stages of the pandemic, there were deadly outbreaks in residences across the country.
The study also did not include the effect of vaccines against COVID-19, which were widely distributed starting in 2021.
The study found that in the Canadian population, men had higher death rates, but black men were the highest with 62 deaths per 100,000 people. Black women also had a much higher mortality rate than their non-racialized counterparts.
Chinese women had the lowest death rate at 16 deaths per 100,000 people.
The study also explored the effects of having low income on the death rate of racialized people after accounting for other risk factors such as age, sex, and housing type.
The study found that a person’s socioeconomic status played a significant role in deaths from COVID-19 for all populations except the Chinese.
“The rate for black people living in low income was almost three times higher compared to black people not living in low income,” Aitken said.
“So this group? seems to be in a much more vulnerable situation than some of the other populations in Canada.”
People with low incomes, overcrowded homes and apartments were more likely to die from COVID-19.
Banerji said it’s clear that many racialized people are at greater risk because of poverty and underlying disease. He added that many of them also had front-line, low-paying jobs where they couldn’t stay home or take sick days.
“This kind of data helps us with public health policy that recognizes the disparity and tries to address it,” he said.
David Fisman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto, said it’s important to take race and ethnicity seriously as factors in people’s health. He said the data had not been available in Canada until recently.
“There’s this interplay between black ethnicity in Canada and low income that’s deadly for people,” Fisman said.
“When you have a black ethnicity and you’re also impoverished, that seems to confer a tremendously high risk.”
The study said its findings were consistent with others in the United States and elsewhere that found more severe outcomes among racialized populations.
A study commissioned by the Black Coalition Against COVID in the US found that rates of infection, hospitalization and death were higher among black Americans. This study said it was the result of structural and social realities, such as front-line jobs, living in multigenerational homes and in more populated areas. Health inequalities, including higher rates of diabetes and chronic kidney disease, as well as racism and bias within the health care system also play a role, according to the study.
The Statistics Canada study said the relationship between low-income, racialized populations and mortality from COVID-19 could be explained by “multiple pathways.” Low income, inadequate housing, and less access to preventive health care can increase the risk.
Fisman said the results may not be surprising to people who saw the massive spread of the virus in low-income neighborhoods or workplaces that are poorly ventilated.
She said it shows how clean indoor air is an important health equity issue.
“It’s becoming easier to see what the mechanisms are that drive these disparities,” he said. “A lot of it is simply related to where people live and work and spend time indoors.”
The study did not look at the effect of COVID-19 on Indigenous people due to data limitations.
Race-based COVID-19 data released in Manitoba last year showed Indigenous people accounted for 17 per cent of COVID-19 infections, despite making up 13 per cent of the provincial population. The First Nations COVID-19 task force in the province found much higher rates of serious outcomes and deaths among this population throughout the pandemic.