Coronavirus or COVID-19 now forces governments to strictly impose work from home set up for companies and lockdown to each community to contain the virus. Due to this health chaos, Brazil already implemented suspension to their 2020 Census for volunteers to no longer visit homes of each citizen. Will the US 2020 Census be the same?
Will the online survey be the solution for US 2020 Census?
As early as now, Brazil's government statistics agency IBGE already announced that the 2020 Brazil Census would no longer take effect for the whole year as a counter-measure against the wider spread of COVID-19. They will postpone the said survey test until 2021. All the budget that was initially designed for the census will now be added to an emergency fund of the government as helping to contain the said virus.
Though Brazil now officially postpones their census, a different scene is now happening in the US government. Over 6,000 COVID-19 positive are currently reported in the country, and more than 100 citizens have now died from the virus. Health experts already claimed that these numbers might go higher over time. Due to this deadly virus, the US government said that an online census might be the best solution for all citizens and the census workers.
On Mar. 9, the country's Census Bureau made its soft launch of online 2020 census and already sent emails to each governing body on all states. These initial censuses ask citizens to reply with all their information through whatever means they have, including through online, via phone or by mail.
All citizens that will not answer the survey until mid-April will be provided with paper questionnaires that will be handed by them from the workers-- through following the proper social distancing as advised by the government.
Online Census can't be the solution, for now, says Census Information Centers
In response to what the government aims to do, Census Information Centers representatives told CNN that online census could not be the solution for all states in the country. They explained that not all citizens have access to the internet or have their phones. Worse, citizens may no longer be interested in answering surveys now that COVID-19 continues to frighten most Americans.
"There are people in LA in particular that do not have computers, and if they do have computers they don't have the broadband to complete it," said Lydia Camarillo, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Census Information Center based in Los Angeles. "Right now, people are not going to be concerned with filling out the census."
Besides this problem, some citizens also noted that Census Bureau are not yet disseminating proper knowledge in all US states about the plan for an online census.
"We'd love to see the Census Bureau pushing back the start of their door-knocking," said one of the Census 2020 senior fellow at New York Immigration Coalition. "Give us an extra month to do the outreach that's going to naturally slow down during this time."
