BIPOC communities are at a far greater risk to COVID-19 due to systemic factors, something the Province of Manitoba says is evident in the previous three waves.
Doctors say BIPOC COVID-19 risks need to be improved before the fourth COVID wave, sharing what factors contributed to major inequalities in cases and hospitalizations.
"Based on population size alone, about twice as many hospitalizations then expected would have occurred in people of BIPOC communities and the hospitalization rate is 3.5 times higher than people who identified as white," Dr. Marcia Anderson, Pandemic Response Coordination Team co-lead, says in a Monday press conference.
(Screenshot: Government of Manitoba/YouTube)BIPOC Community members are on average 14-years-younger than white people admitted to hospital with COVID-19. ICU admissions are also more common for BIPOC people, more than three times higher than white people.
"We were assuming that a 60-year-old African or South Asian had the same risk factors as a 60-year-old white person," Anderson says.
The doctor says this was not the case.
Income's impact on health
While Canada may have universal healthcare, Anderson 25-30 per cent of a person's health status is affected by the healthcare someone receives, and an equal part of this is 25-30 per cent is biology-related.
Dr. Marcia Anderson says income plays a major role in a person's health, and many BIPOC community members have lower-income jobs compared to white people. (Screenshot: Government of Manitoba/YouTube)The other 40-50 per cent of a person's health depends on social determinants of health, which income plays a large role in.
"When we think about income we might think about what occupation would have permitted us to work from home, what times of home, wi-fi access, etc, we would have needed in that home in order to protect itself from more frequent or more intense exposures to COVID," Anderson says.
Many BIPOC people are employed in industries such as transport and service industries, putting them at an even greater risk to COVID-19 exposures. When people go home, often crowded due to cultural or income-stability barriers, they can put the whole home at risk especially if there is not adequate space to individually isolate themselves. This is often resulting in the entire household isolating after coming into contact.
The two weeks of isolation also resulted in a delay to get vaccines. On average, BIPOC Manitobans received their first COVID-19 vaccine approximately two later than their white counterparts.
"Some members of BIPOC communities have felt stigmatized that people in hospital have done something wrong by not following orders, not getting tested, or not getting vaccinated.
Public Health Officials and Premier Brian Pallister have previously been accused of shaming Manitobans for not getting their COVID-19 vaccine and being in the hospital despite some people receiving care not being eligible for the vaccine when they got sick.
Next steps
Anderson says housing, employment, and education investments need to be done to improve the experiences of BIPOC Manitobans to protect them in the future.
Dr. Brent Roussin says they have learnt that at the time age was the most dramatic COVID-19 risk factor, but says now they need to look at a targeted BIPOC approach if booster shots are needed in the fall.
"In the shorter term, perhaps even as we are discussing prioritization for booster doses or timing our intervals for booster doses, we can look at this data and say for sure the is an element that is age, that is congregant setting like a (personal care home), but also we are also going to take into account race and ethnicity in terms of how we are demonstrating this higher risk, which can be housing-related or occupational-related," Anderson says.
Anderson says a way they can do this is by mimicking the First Nations age-based rollout, where younger First Nations people were eligible for the vaccine sooner than their white or BIPOC counterparts.
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