Poverty and COVID-19: More data would help explain the connection

This article originally appeared in National Observer

It is another busy day for Will Prosper.

“I’m not even done. My day starts at nine in the morning and finishes at about 12 at night,” says the co-founder of Hoodstock, a local initiative in Montreal North, about his quest to save lives in the community.

The borough is one of the poorest on the island of Montreal. And there’s emerging evidence that it has become one of the city’s hot spots for COVID-19 infections, according to an analysis by the Institute of Investigative Journalism’s Project Pandemic, a collaborative mapping effort mobilizing journalists across the country using Esri ArcGIS technology.