Episode 33: The Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID in Santiago, Chile with Dr. Pamela P Martinez

COVID-19: Public Health, Policy, and Culture

Although in some countries things have reopened and people feel ready to live in a post-COVID society, unfortuntately this is not yet the case. In Latin America we are seeing COVID hotspots from a global perspective and the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic is clearly emerging. Professor Pamela P. Martinez, Assistant Professor of Microbiology of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shares her recent findings on socioeconomic disparities and lives impacted by COVID-19 in Santiago, Chile. Abstract from Dr. Martinez's recent publication: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected cities particularly hard. Here, we provide an in-depth characterization of disease incidence and mortality and their dependence on demographic and socioeconomic strata in Santiago, a highly segregated city and the capital of Chile. Our analyses show a strong association between socioeconomic status and both COVID-19 outcomes and public health capacity. People living in municipalities with low socioeconomic status did not reduce their mobility during lockdowns as much as those in more affluent municipalities. Testing volumes may have been insufficient early in the pandemic in those places, and both test positivity rates and testing delays were much higher. We find a strong association between socioeconomic status and mortality, measured by either COVID-19-attributed deaths or excess deaths. Finally, we show that infection fatality rates in young people are higher in low-income municipalities. Together, these results highlight the critical consequences of socioeconomic inequalities on health outcomes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33906968/ More about Dr. Martinez: https://mcb.illinois.edu/faculty/profile/pamelapm/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn more about podcasting for public health! Join the Public Health Podcast Network: publichealthpodcasters.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/covid19ppc/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/covid19ppc/support