Ontario will soon collect COVID-19 patients about race and socio-economic (CP24) status

May 7, 2020

From CP24 – Ontario health officials say they will soon be collecting race-based and socio-economic information from COVID-19 patients.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health said that while their primary concern up until a few weeks ago was tracing contact cases from people travelling abroad, they are now seeing more cases popping up in “congregate settings.”

“As we continue to move through we started moving into the congregate settings, that dealt with a lot more areas around shelters and homelessness, and with some of the consultants saying we need to look at that data,” Dr. David Williams said.

“A lot of our initial caseload in early March and March Break was people travelling from cruise ships and destinations, vacations … now we are seeing it flow into these congregant ones,” he said, adding that they have heard concerns about Indigenous Peoples and those who live in the province’s multiple shelter systems.

Williams said officials are talking with health equity experts to determine what information is necessary to collect in order to determine future policy as well as containment of the disease.