This report calls for a greater emphasis on health equity – ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to be healthy – in the response to, and recovery from, Coronavirus.

The report is produced by the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre at Public Health Wales. It is part of a global initiative – led jointly by the World Health Organization, Welsh Government and Public Health Wales – placing Wales at the forefront as a champion country, committed to tackling health inequities.

This inaugural report focuses on the wider, less immediately visible, effects of the pandemic on a range of issues including:

• Poverty, deprivation and social exclusion
• Unemployment, education and the digital divide
• Harmful housing and working conditions, and violence and crime

It also highlights the disproportionate impact that coronavirus has had, and is having, on specific groups such as children and young people, women, key workers and ethnic minorities. For example, young people report being worried about losing their job or not being able to find one; and the educational divide has persisted and increased, particularly for the most deprived in our society.