California to collect and report on LGBTQ coronavirus data

California’s Department of Public Health will begin collecting data on the coronavirus patients based on gender identity and sexual orientation to determine the disease’s effects on the LGBTQ community.

State Secretary of Health and Human Services Mark Ghaly said Tuesday at a press conference that the new data collection will also apply to other reportable diseases, calling the regulations “important steps forward in our ability to see disparities and to address them with our interventions and our programs,” according to The Washington Post.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D) and the LGBTQ rights group Equality California previously introduced a bill that would require the collection of such data, which is still in committee in the state Assembly.

“The COVID-19 crisis has devastated the LGBTQ+ community. But for months, we haven’t had the data to understand how, why or exactly what to do about it,” Equality California Executive Director Rick Chavez Zbur said in a statement.

“From the beginning of this crisis, we have been clear: If LGBTQ+ people are left out of COVID-19 data, we will be left out of California’s data-driven response,” he said.

Data already indicates the pandemic has disproportionately affected Black and Latinx Americans, and numerous risk factors could potentially make LGBTQ people more vulnerable to the virus as well, including a higher prevalence of HIV, some forms of cancer and certain respiratory problems.

Polling also indicates that 17 percent of LGBTQ people do not have health insurance, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. LGBTQ people are also at higher risk of experiencing homelessness. 

Wiener pointed to the AIDS crisis as an example of how disease outbreaks can devastate the LGBTQ community if public health officials do not act.

“The history of the LGBTQ community is a history of fighting against invisibility and erasure,” Wiener told the newspaper. “That is absolutely the case in the health care system.”

“Our history – the history of the LGTBQ community – is one of fighting erasure and invisibility.”

That’s absolutely the case when it comes to our health.

I’m authoring #SB932 to mandate collection of #LGBTQ health data. https://t.co/S6Ge72z6Nj”

— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) July 28, 2020

California is one of the only states that will report on how the virus affects the LGBTQ community.