In mid-April, Wellesley Institute reported that areas in Ontario with higher rates of COVID-19 had lower rates of vaccination. The original report also documented inequities by racial composition of an area: neighbourhoods that had a higher per cent of Black, South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Latino populations had lower rates of vaccination, even after taking COVID-19 infection rates into account.
Since then, at time of writing, 77 per cent of Ontarians have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines, enough to begin a substantial rollout of individuals’ second doses. Approximately 29 per cent of people in Ontario have now received their second dose.
This paper revisits the topics above, by investigating whether associations between neighbourhood characteristics (i.e. racial composition and poverty rates) and vaccination have changed as the second doses of vaccines are being rolled out.