Table 2.

Summary of study characteristics

Author/year	Country	Study title	Methods	Population/subgroup	Objective	MMAT score
Choi et al., 2021 [1]	Canada: Vancouver, Northeast AB, Southwestern ON, Toronto, Montreal. City of Toronto (140 neighbourhoods)	Studying the social determinants of COVID-19 in a data vacuum	Quantitative: Primarily using two data sources: daily count of COVID-19 infections for 89 health regions from the U of T COVID-19 Open Data Working Group and 2016 Canadian census reporting the demographic composition of health regions	Percent Black, percent foreign-born, percent low-income, percent working in health, percent with a bachelor’s degree or higher, percent 65+ years of age—all residents in Canada. (All types of percentages are represented by regions in Canada.)	To link aggregated COVID-19 data at the level of health regions with tabular census data to describe the association between regions; demographic composition and the number of COVID-19 cases during the peak of the first and second waves of the pandemic	High
Sudebi et al., 2020 [3]	Canada: Quebec, Ontario, BC, Alberta Regional: Toronto and Montreal	COVID-19 mortality rates in Canada’s ethno-cultural neighbourhoods	Quantitative: Used Canadian vital statistics death data to estimate mortality rates and the 2016 Census of population for neighbourhood-level information	Blacks and other visible minorities: South Asian, Chinese, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean, and Japanese	To examine whether COVID-19 mortality rates were higher, during the first wave of the pandemic, in Canadian neighbourhoods characterized by higher proportions of population groups designated as visible minorities	High
Taji et al., 2021 [5]	Canada: Ontario	COVID-19 in patients undergoing long-term dialysis in Ontario	Quantitative: Relied on manual data collection to capture key information on patients with COVID-19 infection undergoing long-term dialysis. Data were submitted weekly by all renal programs for all patients with COVID-19 infection. Also, cross-checked data on hospital admissions with the Canadian Institute for Health Information Discharge Abstract Database. Used linked data sets to compare disease characteristics and mortality between patients receiving long-term dialysis in Ontario who were diagnosed as COVID-19 positive and those who did not acquire COVID-19 infection. Data were collected prospectively	Black, white, Indian subcontinent, and other non-white patients receiving long-term dialysis who were registered in the Ontario Renal Reporting System (ORRS; final cohort of 12,501)	To describe the incidence, outcomes, and risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection in the long-term dialysis patient population and to measure outcomes including mortality	High
City of Toronto, 2020 [6]	Canada: Toronto	COVID-19: ethno-racial identity and income	Quantitative: Toronto Public Health data, reports on hospitalization rate by race, cases of COVID-19 by race; includes other data sets irrelevant to this study	Racial groups including Black, Arab/Middle Eastern or West Asian, Latin American, South Asian or Indo-Caribbean, Southeast Asian, East Asian, and white. Includes population data by income and household	Data on ethno-racial identity, income, and household size were analyzed and summarized monthly to inform work by the city of Toronto, Toronto Public Health, and health care and community partners to address inequities in COVID-19 by focusing on specific neighbourhoods and populations that have been most impacted by COVID-19	N/A