This essay offers seven intersectional feminist principles for equitable and actionable COVID-19 data, drawing from the authors' prior work on data feminism. Our book, Data Feminism (D'Ignazio and Klein, 2020), offers seven principles which suggest possible points of entry for challenging and changing power imbalances in data science. In this essay, we offer seven sets of examples, one inspired by each of our principles, for both identifying existing power imbalances with respect to the impact of the novel coronavirus and its response, and for beginning the work of change.

In the first study to examine this issue among COVID-19 patients, researchers found that the inaccurate measurements resulted in a “systemic failure,” delaying care for many Black and Hispanic patients. The study adds a growing sense of urgency to an issue raised decades ago.

The Government has admitted that the providers listed on its own webpage 'may not have full accreditation' - and has insisted it has not 'recommended or approved' any firm

A large Covid-19 testing provider is being investigated by the UK’s data privacy watchdog over its plans to sell swabs containing customers’ DNA for medical r

Digital vaccine passports are novel technologies, built on uncertain and evolving science. By creating infrastructure for segregation and risk scoring at an individual level, and enabling third-parties to access health information, they bring profound risks to individual rights and concepts of equity in society.

Exclusive: Equalities watchdog tells government documents could create ‘two-tier society’

Objective To quantify rates of organ specific dysfunction in individuals with covid-19 after discharge from hospital compared with a matched control group from the general population. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting NHS hospitals in England. Participants 47 780 individuals (mean age 65, 55% men) in hospital with covid-19 and discharged alive by 31 August 2020, exactly matched to controls from a pool of about 50 million people in England for personal and clinical characteristics from 10 years of electronic health records. Main outcome measures Rates of hospital readmission (or any admission for controls), all cause mortality, and diagnoses of respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic, kidney, and liver diseases until 30 September 2020. Variations in rate ratios by age, sex, and ethnicity. Results Over a mean follow-up of 140 days, nearly a third of individuals who were discharged from hospital after acute covid-19 were readmitted (14 060 of 47 780) and more than 1 in 10 (5875) died after discharge, with these events occurring at rates four and eight times greater, respectively, than in the matched control group. Rates of respiratory disease (P

BMJ analysis of 48,000 records also finds one in eight patients die within four months of discharge

This was a wasted opportunity. But last year’s protests created a move for change the government won’t be able to hold back, says Simon Woolley, director of Operation Black Vote

Agnes Agyepong, parent engagement programme manager at Best Beginnings and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust Maternity Voices Partnership Chair discusses why Black women are not engaging in research and what can be done to change this?

There is a growing body of evidence, however, that pulse oximetry is less accurate in darker skinned patients. Given the increased mortality amongst ethnic minority patients during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is possible that the differential accuracy of pulse oximetry is a contributing factor to this health inequality

Boris Johnson’s race equality advisers are expected to suggest change after study of employment market

Understanding Patient Data supports conversations with the public, patients and healthcare professionals about the uses of health information for care and research.

What are data and technology? How do they impact Black lives in our health systems?

Some thoughts on the legal and ethical implications of ‘vaccine passports’ (thread)— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) March 4, 2021

Under the recommendations from the Race Disparity Unit (RDU) healthcare professionals would be required to ask patients their ethnicity.

John Hollis is one of the rare people who has “super antibodies”. If scientists hope to find others like John, they’ll have to tackle long standing mistrust (& earned!) among the African-American community.

It morally unjustifiable for tech companies to walk away from the pandemic with massive profits while schools are burdened with debt.

There are known inequalities in how Black communities access micro mobility. Yet there aren’t many metrics or datasets to help organisations and communities understand and measure these inequalities.

We were often taught to look for symptoms, such as rashes, in a way that I knew wouldn’t appear on my own skin.'

Mobile applications aided by artificial intelligence may help migrants better address their physical and mental health.

In the U.K., a recent poll suggested that while Britons were strongly supportive of vaccine passports in principle, agreement broke down when asked whether they should be compulsory for pub visits. For marginalised groups, this feels like nudge theory to overcome a reluctance (based on real trauma) to trust public health services: “some employees who don’t want to get the vaccine feel harassed and ostracized.”

High levels of deprivation and job insecurity, vast income inequality, housing discrimination and medical disparities have long had a severe impact on the tangle of communities and ethnic minority populations that live in these boroughs. But when combined with the necessity to go to work, to take public transport and to share space in densely packed housing, they also provided the perfect breeding ground for a deadly virus. The domino effect would prove catastrophic.

For people of low socio-economic status (SES), a number of factors increase their exposure to COVID-19. Possible causal mechanisms include an increased exposure to the virus, the stress and comorbidities associated with poverty and reduced access to health care. UK policymakers rapidly identified people with multiple comorbidities as particularly vulnerable. However, they must expand their definition of vulnerability to include social factors as risks for COVID-19.

Interviews with diversity managers and internal data obtained by Recode indicate that Black Amazon employees are promoted less frequently and are rated more harshly than non-Black peers.

We’re used to medical chatbots giving dangerous advice, but one based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 took it much further. Researchers experimenting with GPT-3, the AI text-generation model, found that it is not ready to replace human respondents in the chatbox. Medical chatbot using OpenAI’s GPT-3 told a fake patient to kill themselves.

Actor David Harewood's BBC documentary explores why people of colour are more likely to die from Covid-19.

How many times have you seen an all-female and black and ethnic minority (BME) panel talking about technology? For many people their first time would have been the Shuri Network launch last July. The Shuri Network was launched in 2019 to support women of colour in NHS digital health develop the skills and confidence to progress into senior leadership positions and help NHS leadership teams more closely represent the diversity of their workforce.