Infectious disease specialists know that poverty and overcrowding as well as chronic health conditions are likely to produce increased numbers of infections in a epidemic or pandemic.
In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, events have unfolded as expected. These relationships have proved to be true internationally. For those keeping track of COVID-19’s progress, reports from neighbourhoods around the world — and even from individual buildings — have consistently confirmed infection links between poverty, overcrowding and chronic health conditions.
But not always.
There is much that remains to be learned about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is causing the current pandemic. Why, for example, have expected high levels of infection in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side not materialized? The area is poor, over-crowded and home to many with other health problems.
What accounts for the unexpected result? Read more at the CBC: Did COVID-19 skip Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood? Antibody testing might have the answer
