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Municipalities with the highest unemployment rates and highest income inequalities are those with the highest cumulative number of covid-19 cases. The disease “does not present itself as an equal threat to all,” underline the authors of the Covid-19 Barometer of the National School of Public Health (ENSP), who went to see the distribution of confirmed cases by the country’s 308 municipalities to conclude The infection with the new coronavirus appears to be “markedly uneven”, affecting municipalities with a “more precarious socioeconomic profile” more markedly.
The most vulnerable groups of the population have already been seriously affected due to the economic consequences of confinement, such as unemployment or reduced income, for believing in the results of the questionnaire for four thousand people that ENSP also made under this barometer and that each week follows the perception of the Portuguese in times of pandemic.
One in four people surveyed earns less than 650 euros a month (considering home) He says he has totally lost his income, while in income categories above 2500 euros it only happened in 6% of cases. “It is worrying. It is even shocking ”, says Joana Alves, researcher at ENSP. In total, 14% of respondents say they have completely lost their income, a third have partially lost, and more than half say they have lost no income.
The phenomenon of inequalities can “exacerbate previously existing vulnerabilities”, that is, the consequences may be more negative for people in a situation that is more precarious, warn the experts who signed the study. When the pandemic is not the same for everyone. This analysis took into account the contribution of factors socioeconomic and access to health services in the number of cases of COVID-19 registered until 30 April Preliminary results indicate, on the one hand, that it is in the municipalities with the highest population density where there is the highest cumulative incidence of cases and, on the other hand, that it is in the municipalities with the lowest unemployment rate, the highest average income The higher and the lower income inequality (measured by the Gini index), the lower the cumulative number of cases.
The explanations for these results are several. It is already known that “health worsens with each step down the social hierarchy,” say the ENSP researchers. The covid-19 pandemic will be no exception. From the outset, socioeconomic conditions can have a significant influence on the risk of infection, but the same can be true of diagnosis, treatment, and outcome (i.e., survival).
The mere lack of understanding of how the disease spreads “can hinder the adoption of the proposed measures to combat the pandemic”, as well as the assessment of the need for social distance “can be compromised by a lower level of literacy,” they point out. . Likewise, precarious work, low wages taking into account the cost of living and the difficulty of accessing social support can “prevent people from taking more refuge in their homes to protect themselves from the virus,” they stress.
“There are people who cannot telework and therefore are more exposed to transmission risks,” emphasizes Joana Alves. This risk also increases when living conditions are worse, when people “live in neighborhoods with a higher population density and use more crowded public transport,” he adds.
Access to medical care may also be influencing the number of confirmed cases, since greater accessibility to health services may also mean a greater number of tests carried out, they emphasize, noting that municipalities with more doctors for every thousand inhabitants they also have more cases.
But this is not a national phenomenon, emphasize the ENSP researchers. In an analysis focused on only two of the universal indicators of inequality, unemployment and the Gini index, the highest cumulative incidence of cases per 100,000 inhabitants appears to be associated with countries with a higher unemployment rate and income inequality. In fourth place in terms of greater inequality in the group of 15 countries analyzed, Portugal appears in the center of the table in the number of accumulated cases of covid-19.
