The federal government has again been accused of failing migrant communities with its COVID-19 response after “disturbing” newly-released data revealed the death rate has been almost three times higher for people born overseas than it has for those born in Australia.
Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in October last year showed, of the COVID-19 deaths up to 31 July 2021, the age-standardised mortality rate for people born overseas , as opposed to 2.0 deaths for those born locally.
But updated ABS data released this week taking in the deaths up to 31 January 2022 – including parts of the Delta and Omicron waves - showed the overseas-born rate, compared to 2.3 for those born in Australia.
The new figures show the mortality rate for people born in the Middle East - 29.3 deaths per 100,000 people - is more than ten times that of people born in Australia.
That’s compared to the figures released in October, which had the combined rate of people born in either North Africa or the Middle East at 6.0 deaths per 100,000 people.
People born in southern and eastern Europe had a COVID-19 death rate of 11.1 per 100,000 people, while those born in north-east Asia, the United Kingdom and Ireland had similar fatality rates to those born in Australia.
Labor has used the data to accuse the Coalition of once again neglecting multicultural communities during the pandemic, after and were uncovered in its health messaging distributed in languages other than English.
The opposition’s health and multicultural affairs spokespeople, Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles, said in a statement the government had “done nothing to reverse the disturbing and disproportionate” COVID-19 mortality rate for people born outside of Australia.
“Throughout this pandemic, the government has consistently neglected the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities,” they said.
“The government has refused to translate health advice in a timely manner. They have refused to collect and disclose the vaccination rates of culturally and linguistically diverse communities or invest in appropriate health campaigns.
“Everyone deserves to have access to timely and accurate public health information to keep them and their families safe.”
'We should have worked this out'
The chair of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia – the national peak body for those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds - said the figures were “very worrying” and “very displeasing”.
“All of us should have worked this out so the morbidity rates amongst CALD communities isn't what it is today,” Mary Patetsos told SBS News.
She said many people from migrant backgrounds work in industries that were “always going to be exposed” to the virus, and the high fatality rate was a blight on the country.
“They were the ones that were serving as coffee. They were working in supermarkets. They were working as carers in aged care and health. They were driving the trucks. They were the taxi drivers. They're all the people on the frontline that we knew were vulnerable. We needed to target them hard and fast at the beginning,” she said.
“Pandemics don't wait for us to get it right. We had to have got it right at the front. If we've lost lives because of that failure, then it's a disappointment and a shame on all of us.”
On Wednesday, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly conceded during Senate estimates there had been "particular issues in culturally and linguistically diverse communities".
He said outbreak epicentres across various waves of the virus, such as Melbourne's north and west in 2020 and south-western Sydney in 2021, had been in areas with high overseas-born populations, including sizeable Middle Eastern diasporas.
Senators also heard the government and had engaged community leaders to help suppress the spread of the virus and improve vaccination rates during the pandemic.
The chair of the government's CALD COVID-19 advisory task force Lucas De Toca said it had "done a lot of targeted, specific work" with migrant communities, including Middle Eastern populations.
“Those communities and they have shown incredible leadership in self-organising and working with both levels of government to manage cases but also to improve vaccination rates," Dr De Toca said.
“South-western Sydney is a really good example of an area with high proportion of Arabic-speaking and the Aramaic-speaking populations having a dramatic increase in vaccine uptake in the July, August, September months of last year. A lot of work was undertaken by the communities on the ground with support from the government."
But Ms Patetsos said more should have been done earlier, particularly around vaccination.
“I absolutely acknowledge a lot of work has now been done and we have certainly breached many of those gaps,” she said.
“We should have been able to communicate the importance of vaccinating early and that was I think a failure on behalf of government … there has been some catch-up but it was not good enough and we’ve ended up with high mortality rates.”
With Gloria Kalache.
