COVID-19 racial divide includes seven-fold higher risk of death

London, Ont. -

A landmark report indicates systemic racism in Ontario is putting racialized populations at as much as seven times higher risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19.

Prepared by Ontario Health and The Wellesley Institute, the report titled ‘Tracking COVID-19 Through Race-Based Data’ is a detailed analysis of racial inequity in health outcomes related to the pandemic.

“This is a tremendous report,” said Middlesex-London Medical Officer of Health Dr. Chris Mackie during a media briefing on Thursday.

Among the report’s key findings, “As compared to white Ontarians, other racial groupings had 1.2 to 7.1-fold higher age standardized per capita rate of infection.”

And among those infected, “As compared to white Ontarians, other racial groupings had 1.7 to 7.6-fold higher age standardized per capita rate of death.

A graph shows COVID-19 fatalities by race in Ontario from the report Tracking COVID-19 Through Race-Based Data by Ontario Health and The Wellesley Institute.
A graph shows per capita COVID-19 fatality rates by race in Ontario from the report Tracking COVID-19 Through Race-Based Data by Ontario Health and The Wellesley Institute.

Latinos, South Asians and people from the Middle East face the greatest inequity.

The report used health data collected between June 26, 2020 and April 21, 2021 from across Ontario.

Mackie calls the findings “the definition of systemic/institutionalized racism. Not only in health care, but also in hiring practices, compensation models, power dynamics, housing systems, social assistance paradigms, (and) wealth allocation processes."

“Systemic racism is the system,” Trevor Hinds of Black Unicorn Consulting tells CTV News London.

Hinds says the report only confirms what racialized communities already knew -- that barriers to accessing the key determinants of health mentioned by Mackie made people more vulnerable to COVID-19.

A graph shows COVID-19 cases by race in Ontario from the report Tracking COVID-19 Through Race-Based Data by Ontario Health and The Wellesley Institute.
A graph shows per capita COVID-19 infection rates by race in Ontario from the report Tracking COVID-19 Through Race-Based Data by Ontario Health and The Wellesley Institute.

He explains that closing the pandemic’s racial divide will not be easy.

"It’s really complex. It’s not something where you can create a brochure to fix the problem. There’s a very long history.”

Mackie says although the amount of race-based COVID-19 data from London and Middlesex County is only a fraction of what went into the provincial report, he believes a local analysis can still yield important insights.

“We do plan to analyze what we have, and do as much of a similar analysis as we can and bring that to our (Middlesex-London) Board of Health this fall.”