Current Problems

Health (18-24)

Access to COVID-19 Data

December 1, 2020

BELLA BELLA, BRITISH COLUMBIA – A coalition of First Nations leaders who have been calling on BC’s Ministry of Health to share COVID-19 case information with their governments for months, say they feel vindicated by Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond’s report on systemic racism, and expect BC’s provincial health officer and Minister of Health, to implement the report’s recommendations immediately, including addressing COVID-19 information sharing. Turpel-Lafond’s report finds pandemic is magnifying racism and disproportionally impacting Indigenous people, including a lack of “timely and complete sharing of data related to positive or presumptive cases of COVID in or near First Nations Communities.”