HALIFAX -- A member of the Senate is speaking out about the level of COVID-19 cases within African Nova Scotian communities.

Wanda Thomas Bernard says she has been hearing from residents in the Preston area and has written to her Senate colleagues, expressing her concerns.

"We know that racism is a social determinant of health, but it's not identified as such," Thomas Bernard said.

The Preston area has been identified by the Nova Scotia government as one community that has a higher number of COVID-19 cases.

Last Tuesday, Premier Stephen McNeil suggested people weren't following physical-distancing guidelines in that area, as well as in the Elmsdale area.

"It’s not just the suggestion that they weren’t following the public health guidelines around social, physical-distancing, but the tone that was used, the language that was used and the way it was presented," Thomas Bernard said.

The province says it is providing more support for the community.

"Providing, I’ll call it the social supports, required for us to wrap our hands around the community and get a handle on this disease which is having a substantive impact on North Preston," said Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief medical officer of health.

Dr. Strang says new strategies were developed over the weekend.

"There’s longstanding challenges in the North Preston community, that many families have financial challenges, housing challenges," Dr. Strang said. "What has been brought to bear over the weekend is establishing a robust response by the provincial government. So when we have families that have housing solutions, we have families yesterday and today that needed to get access and transportation to get to a testing site … all of those things are on the ground now."

Thomas Bernard is hoping for more.

"If there was ever a time we needed to be collecting health data by race it surely is now," she said.

She said that information would show the disparity of how COVID-19 is affecting different racial demographics.