SARS-CoV-2 testing and COVID-19 related primary care use among people with citizenship, permanent residency, and temporary immigration status in British Columbia: Cross-sectional analysis of population-based administrative data
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Abstract
Background
Having temporary immigration status affords limited rights, workplace protections, and access to services. There is not yet research data on impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for people with temporary immigration status in Canada.
Methods
We use linked administrative data to describe SARS-CoV-2 testing, positive tests, and COVID-19 primary care service use in British Columbia from January 1, 2020, to July 31, 2021, stratified by immigration status (Citizen, Permanent Resident, Temporary Resident). We plot the rate of people tested and the rate of people confirmed positive for COVID-19 by week from April 19, 2020, to July 31, 2021, across immigration groups.
Results
4.9% of people with temporary immigration status had a positive test for SARS-CoV-2 over this period, compared to 4.0% among people with permanent residency and 2.1% among people who hold Canadian citizenship. This pattern is persistent by sex/gender, age group, neighborhood income quintile, health authority, and in both metropolitan and small urban settings. At the same time we observe lower access to testing and COVID-19 related primary care among people with temporary status.
Interpretation
People with temporary immigration status in BC experience higher SARS-CoV-2 test positivity; alarmingly, this was coupled with lower access to testing and primary care. Interwoven immigration, health and occupational policies place people with temporary status in circumstances of precarity and higher health risk. Extending permanent residency status to all immigrants residing in Canada and decoupling access to health care from immigration status could reduce precarity due to temporary immigration status.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.05.21265978: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Field Sample Permit: People with temporary status include people with work permits (including Temporary Foreign Workers), study permits, refugee claimants and convention refugees whose refugee claim was accepted but who do not yet have permanent residency. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.05.21265978: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Field Sample Permit: People with temporary status include people with work permits (including Temporary Foreign Workers), study permits, refugee claimants and convention refugees whose refugee claim was accepted but who do not yet have permanent residency. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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