COVID-19: N.S. Black community, officials say more race-based data needed on pandemic

Community leaders say long-standing inequities in education, housing and employment in Nova Scotia's Black communities have been amplified by COVID-19,

Long-standing inequities in education, housing and employment in Nova Scotia’s Black communities have been amplified by COVID-19, according to community leaders who are trying to collect better race-based data on the pandemic.

Those same issues have left African Nova Scotians vulnerable to misinformation about the disease, said David Haase, with the Health Association of African Nova Scotians, or HAAC.

“When COVID came along, we recognized that there was misinformation, mainly on social media, that the community was seeing and absorbing,” Haase said during a recent interview. “Things like, ‘Black people are not as easily infected,’ which is the opposite to the reality, we realized.”

The last two years have been particularly difficult for the province’s Black community, many of whom are descendants of American Loyalists who arrived in Nova Scotia in the 1780s, as a result of the American Revolution.

John Ariyo, director of equality and engagement with the province, said in an interview last week, “COVID has actually uncovered … some of the inequalities in our communities when it comes to Black residents.”

Data from the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia indicates that from February 2020 to February 2022, the number of people of African descent experiencing homelessness in the Halifax region rose to 93 people from 59.

Ingrid Waldron, a professor at McMaster University, has been working with Dalhousie University to explore the pandemic’s effects on African Nova Scotians and to build a culturally specific response plan for future major health crises.

“Many of these Black communities in Nova Scotia are historic communities that are rural or semi-rural and they don’t, in some cases, have a lot of amenities,” she said.