Covid-19: ensuring equality of access to testing for ethnic minorities
Catherine Dodds, Ibidun Fakoya
Abstract
Until successful vaccination programmes are in place governments will be heavily reliant on widespread testing and contact tracing to reduce the reproduction number of SARS-CoV-2. 1 Meanwhile international evidence continues to emerge about ethnic disparities in covid-19 morbidity and mortality, 2 3 echoing the unequal burdens of other global epidemics such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and HIV. At this crucial juncture, health and policy planners must ensure that access to and uptake of SARS-CoV-2 testing is equitable across all social and economic gradients. We support the recent call for immediate inclusion of social scientists, anthropologists, leaders of marginalised communities, and experts in local social determinants of health in health policy making for this pandemic 4 so that sufficient access, trust, and cultural competence are built in to test, track, and trace programmes for covid-19.