GSL’s newest study analyzes over 280,000 deaths and nearly 10 million COVID-19 cases across 608 neighborhoods to understand how urban epidemics are shaped by social inequities in the eight largest cities in Canada and Latin America.
Authors Mathieu Poirier, Andrea Morales Caceres, Tieneke E Dykstra, Aline Dayrell Ferreira Sales and Waleska Teixeira Caiaffa found that high-income neighborhoods were often early epicentres of the virus, while low-income neighborhoods disproportionately bore the consequences.
High-income neighborhoods had privileged access to scarce testing resources, which allowed them to prevent the spread of the disease and biases our understanding of urban health inequities.
Of all eight cities, the clearest link between income inequality and COVID-19 transmission can be seen around our very own GSL headquarters at York University in Toronto.
By adopting policies to reduce social inequity and income inequality in cities, policymakers can help communities be better prepared for future infectious disease outbreaks.
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