Toronto Public Health to collect race-based coronavirus data
Toronto Public Health is looking at race-based COVID-19 data to better understand the virus.
According to City Councillor and Toronto Board of Health Chair Joe Cressy, public health data is one of the most important tools we have to combat COVID-19.
“We should be collecting as much information about COVID-19 as possible, including disaggregated race-based data, so we can better understand how this virus impacts different groups of people,” he said on Wednesday.
In a letter to the Toronto Board of Health Members, Cressy said that access to comprehensive ethno-racial data in Ontario is crucial for understanding COVID-19 and its connection to systemic inequities.
“Unfortunately, the province is not tracking COVID-19 data based on race or ethnicity when testing. In that absence, Toronto Public Health is partnering with hospitals and others to try to collect race-based and additional data to inform our response,” he said.
In addition to his letter, Cressy shared a series of tweets regarding the matter.
“In other countries, we see this pandemic has disproportionate impacts on racialized and ethnic groups, including African-Americans in the US,” he said, adding that he believes not tracking the data is the wrong approach.
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“I believe this is the wrong approach, and I will continue to advocate that the province urgently find a way to provide more detailed data on COVID-19 tests and cases to Toronto Public Health and other local health units.”
The letter states that the lack of this data hinders communities from “fully understanding any disproportionate impacts this pandemic is having on specific ethno-racial groups and others facing barriers due to systemic inequalities.”
With the absence of data from the provincial government, Toronto Public Health began conducting a preliminary ecological analysis linking home addresses of COVID-19 cases to area-based estimates of sociodemographic characteristics from the Census, as a proxy for individual-level data, according to Cressy.
In other countries, we see this pandemic has disproportionate impacts on racialized and ethnic groups, including African-Americans in the US. Access to comprehensive ethno-racial data in Ontario is crucial for understand COVID-19 and its connection to systemic inequities.
— Joe Cressy (@joe_cressy) April 22, 2020
The public health unit’s objective is to estimate if there are disparities in COVID-19 incidences and hospitalizations between sociodemographic groups in Toronto.
“We know groups like the elderly and people experiencing homelessness are more vulnerable to COVID-19,” Cressy said.
“It’s crucial that we know if other groups are also at higher risk. I will continue to advocate for comprehensive data including the collection of disaggregated race-based data.”
Earlier this week, Toronto Public Health launched the Coronavirus Rapid Entry System (CORES) to manage case and contact tracing.
“In the weeks to come, we will be exploring the ability to enhance the data fields in CORES to allow for the collection of race-based data,” said Cressy.
As of 12:30 pm on April 21, 3,820 cases of COVID-19 have been reported to Toronto Public Health, along with 190 deaths. There are currently no regional breakdowns of where the cases or deaths have occurred in the city.
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