Social inequalities and the COVID-19 pandemic

Social inequality has been identified as an important determinant of the outcome of infectious diseases and the recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has vividly reminded us that there are no "equal opportunity infectors". In a recent article, Chakrabarty et al. (2023) reported the finding of a cross-country comparison of COVID-19 cases and social deprivation, using up-to-date statistical modelling. These results add to the extensive evidence showing that vulnerable populations are consistently at higher risk of contracting the infection and to suffer from more severe symptoms, whatever the spatial scale used (from the country to the neighborhood). Spatial clustering of socially deprived groups, preexisting pathologies and hotspots of COVID-19 cases and deaths indicate that the SARS-CoV-2 should be seen as a syndemic, where both the infection dynamics and the outcome of the disease strongly depend on the three-way interaction between the virus, preexisting pathologies, and the socioeconomic environment.