Hardship links to Covid

Housing, job insecurity concerns

PEOPLE struggling with housing and job insecurity were more likely to be infected with Covid during Victoria’s second wave, new data has revealed

A new study, co-authored by Barwon Health and Deakin University experts, concluded Victoria’s second Covid-19 wave was influenced by the socio-economic conditions of the communities it impacted.

Data suggested transmission was higher in postcodes with younger people, large sections of the community with rented homes, who spoke a language other than English at home, or whose mortgage or rent payments exceeded 30 per cent of household incomes.

“Job insecurity and lack of leave entitlements discourage employees from seeking health care and reporting illness,” the study reported.

“Access to paid sick leave can reduce transmission during a pandemic by enabling workers to isolate themselves.”

The findings come after a

US study suggested housing instability, higher housing density, lack of access to paid leave and inadequate access to healthy food and drinking water hampered efforts to slow transmission of Covid-19.

The local data showed the rate of infection in regional Victoria increased with the rate of larger households, people born overseas and unemployment, but decreased with the proportion of people with private health insurance.

Locally, health teams tackled large outbreaks at a Colac abattoir and a chicken processing plant at Breakwater.

“The workplaces with the highest numbers of SARSCoV-2 infections in Victoria were abattoirs and warehouses, workplaces deemed economically essential ... and these workers could probably not readily isolate themselves from others,” the paper read.

“Further, jobs in abattoirs and warehouses are often casual, low-wage positions, factors associated with other social risks for poor health.”

The authors said policies and healthcare reform taking inequality into account could “mitigate future waves of Covid-19, help target vaccination programs to people at particular risk” and “better prepare Australia for future pandemics”.

It also found that those issues affected people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities and younger people at a larger rate.