The cochairs of the Legislature’s Public Health Committee say inequity is their top concern in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.

 “The COVID epidemic ripped through the Commonwealth and exposed inequities that we’ve all known have been long present in our midst,” said Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton, the Senate chair of the committee. “These inequities drove a greater percentage of people of color to get the virus, a greater percentage of people of color to become more ill with the virus, and a greater percentage of people of color to die from COVID.”

 Comerford said her goal during the coming legislative session is to craft budget and policy measures to address the inequities. “What do we do now as we come out of this one-year arc to address these inequities and write a new chapter for the Commonwealth?” she asked.

 Rep. Marjorie Decker of Cambridge, the House chair of the committee, said she felt similarly, and had concerns about Gov. Charlie Baker’s handling of the crisis, specifically his decision to leave many key decisions to local communities and the whiplash-inducing changes in state policies.

 “I thought, oh my God, are you kidding,” she said. “School districts can’t decide if they want a charter school but they should decide whether or not they should close in response to an infectious disease that we’re still learning about. For me that kind of has set the tone,” she said. “Communities have really been left to themselves with very, very broad-stroke guidelines from the governor. That has played out in the rollback of what we shut down. So it’s your choice to go sit in a restaurant right now, but should you? What I want from the governor is more transparency about what is informing his decisions. It’s OK that we might disagree, but what I want him to do is be more transparent about is science informing this decision to open up? Are the doctors on your COVID-19 advisory committee, are they telling you to do that? Or are you responding to a constituency within the business community?”