BC’s Provincial Health Officer was asked how she responds to critics who say it is a disservice that the province has not been collecting racial or socio-economic data for COVID-19. Dr Bonnie Henry says she agrees with that.
Henry says it has been collecting some of that information as it pertains to indigenous people. “We have from the very beginning collected information on indigeneity and we continue to do that in partnership with Metis Nation BC and the First Nations Health Authority and that has been really important in helping us understand the impact in those communities.”
Henry says it did collect some of that other race based information in its recent COVID-19 survey which looked at both the positive things that the province can do more of and what the negative things are that it needs to address.
“Because we know both of those have differential impacts on different communities and we are collecting some very important disaggregate information by race, by ethnicity, by community, by socio-economic status because that does help us understand the impacts that it has had on various different communities across the province.”
“And who is differently effected by those. So we are doing that. And in addition we’re looking at proxies for certain communities by being able to report at a smaller geographic level and we talked a little bit about that last week and we’ll be presenting data at a smaller level.”