ArticleBMC public health2025
The effects of deprivation, age, and regional differences in COVID-19 mortality from 2020 to 2022: a retrospective analysis of public provincial data.
Article in BMC public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Dual Epidemics in Toronto: Shared and Divergent Neighborhood Risks of COVID-19 and Opioid Mortality from a Joint Spatial and Temporal Analysis.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2026Article
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4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCoronavirus disease (COVID-19) quickly spread around the world after its initial identification in Wuhan, China in 2019 and became a global public health crisis. COVID-19 related hospitalizations and deaths as important disease outcomes have been investigated by many studies while less attention has been given to the relationship between these two outcomes at a public health unit level. In this study, we aim to establish the relationship of counts of deaths and hospitalizations caused by COVID-19 over time across 34 public health units in Ontario, Canada, taking demographic, geographic, socio-economic, and vaccination variables into account.
methodsWe analyzed daily data of the 34 health units in Ontario between March 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022. Associations between numbers of COVID-19 related deaths and hospitalizations were explored over three subperiods according to the availability of vaccines and the dominance of the Omicron variant in Ontario. A generalized additive model (GAM) was fit in each subperiod. Heterogeneity across public health units was formulated via a random intercept in each of the models.
resultsMean daily COVID-19 deaths increased quickly as daily hospitalizations increased, particularly when daily hospitalizations were less than 20. In all the subperiods, mean daily deaths of a public health unit was significantly associated with its population size and the proportion of confirmed cases in subjects over 60 years old. The proportion of fully vaccinated (2 doses of primary series) people in the 60 + age group was a significant factor after the availability of the COVID-19 vaccines. The deprivation index, a measure of poverty, had a significantly positive effect on COVID-19 mortality after the dominance of the Omicron variant in Ontario. Quantification of these effects was provided, including effects related to public health units.
conclusionsThe differences in COVID-19 mortality across health units decreased over time, after adjustment for other covariates. In the last subperiod when most public health protections were released and the Omicron variant dominated, the least advantaged group might suffer higher COVID-19 mortality. Interventions such as paid sick days and cleaner indoor air should be made available to counter lifting of health protections.
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