In a recent senate estimate session, I highlighted the alarming ethnic disparities in COVID-19 mortality rates. Australians from the Middle East died at three times the average death rate, those from Southern Europe twice as high, while sub-Saharan Africans had lower mortality rates.
What’s driving these disparities? The health experts suggest that low vaccine coverage and socioeconomic factors played roles in these differences. As vaccination efforts improved, mortality rates began to align more closely with the general population.
These are just theories, not explanations, and it comes across as a lazy response. There’s no justification for not making an effort to understand the reasons behind such a serious medical issue.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Professor Kelly, you previously brought someone forward to talk about the differences in incidence and severity with a low-socioeconomic profile.
Prof. Kelly: Mr Gould, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Australian residents from the Middle East died at three times the population mean, those from Southern Europe were twice as likely to die and those from North Africa were almost three times as likely to die; however, sub-Saharan Africans were less likely to die. Why are we seeing ethnic differences in COVID mortality in Australia? I understand that ‘ethnic’ is to do with culture.
Dr Gould: Yes. Just talking around the numbers involved, as you say, the ABS has reported, during various stages of the pandemic, mortality rates for people born in different countries and, as you’ve said, there are higher mortality rates for people born in places such as the Middle East. There are a number of potential reasons for that. One of the areas that I discussed in my previous answer, which I think is relevant, is that, for a lot of those communities, initially, vaccine coverage rates were low. So significant work was done during the course of the pandemic to work with those communities to increase the coverage rate, and we really saw quite a dramatic shift during the course of the pandemic in the variation in mortality rates between these communities in the general Australian population; to a large degree, they came into line with the general population experience, so that was a positive outcome. Certainly, there’s an indication that the vaccine rates would have had a role to play. We did talk as well about socioeconomic status. We do know that, for some language groups or groups born in different countries, those rates may correlate with different socioeconomic status as well, so there may be some relationships there.
Senator ROBERTS: So there’s an overlap, potentially, in some areas?
Dr Gould: Potentially, yes. It’s not broadly always the case. We find that a lot of recent, skilled migrants live in high socioeconomic areas, so it’s difficult to make a broad generalisation there.
