This week the provincial government announced the opening of two new COVID-19 assessment centres in the historically black communities of East Preston and Cherry Brooke.
A few weeks ago Premier Stephen McNeil identified the areas as hotspots of COVID-19.
After which the Nova Scotia Health Authority implemented a targeted strategy for those areas.
“Providing, I’ll call it the social supports, required for us to wrap our hands around the community and get a handle on this disease which is having a substantive impact on North Preston,” said Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health on April 12.
Groups like the Preston Community COVID-19 Response Team have worked to improve the resources available to their communities which face unique challenges.
Nzingha Bernard Millar with the PCCRT says that these communities face both physical and systemic isolation from key health resources.
The new testing centres will come as welcome news as Millar said “Testing, testing! That is what we need so we can make effective decisions.”
The communities also are burdened at this time but something that would typically be a good thing, familial ties.
“In these communities there are a lot of people living on the same street or very close to their families which creates a different challenge for physical distancing.” Millar said.
The provincial government has also faced calls to consider releasing racial information as it regards to COVID-19 cases, including calls from Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard who said in an interview with CTV Atlantic “If there was ever a time we needed to be collecting health data by race it surely is now.”
As of today, no racial information is available with regards to Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 testing figures.
