Online maps show areas facing higher COVID risks

A new series of searchable online maps offers neighbourhood-level comparisons of COVID-19 risks across the province.

The maps, created by Simon Fraser University geography Prof. Valorie Crooks and a team of researchers, use publicly available census data to determine a risk level for each neighbourhood.

They're intended to guide policymakers and administrators by identifying areas of the province that need additional support in order to prevent or manage outbreaks.

Risk levels were determined using a variety of factors, including economic and employment information, type of housing, transit use, and density of schools and long-term care facilities, among others. Users can compare risk levels across neighbourhoods and cities.

The maps “show how side-byside neighbourhoods throughout the province can have very different levels of risk, which has important implications for the types of public health measures that should be in place,” Crooks said.

“We're talking about guidance like not going outside of our cities or trying to keep life local,” she said.

“One of the things that these maps show is that, yes, risks are very, very different across the province. And so this is why we're being asked to limit these movements.”

According to Crooks, another role for the maps is to help people “make decisions about where they will or will not go, what they will or will not do in their everyday lives.”

“These maps are not intended for you to say, `I should go to grocery store A instead of grocery store B, because grocery store A is in a more lightly shaded area,'” she said.

But she noted that it has been difficult to communicate why it's important to restrict travel, to avoid a day trip to Whistler or to visit a relative in another part of the province.

The maps, she said, help “visually demonstrate why that's the case.”

Crooks says the maps can also help to inform vaccine rollout planning, particularly in more remote parts of the province where the health-care workforce may be limited.

“If we see certain clusters of neighbourhoods or communities in northern and rural British Columbia that actually face greater risk,” she said, “we would likely want to focus on those communities.

“In terms of a vaccine rollout, there's definitely a use for this kind of risk information.”