The British actor said the pandemic is "reflecting and revealing the faultlines in our society".
"I have lost two family members to COVID. I just want to believe their deaths and all the others aren't for nothing. We gotta step up to reimagine a better future," Riz said in a interview with GQ Hype.
The actor, who was born in London to a British Pakistani family, added, "I'm seeing reports of India, where the government are calling it "corona-jihad" and they're trying to blame it on the spread of Muslims and they are segregating hospitals between Muslims and non-Muslims."
Riz said politicians across the globe are utilizing the situation to serve their agendas.
"This crisis is reflecting and revealing the faultlines in our society, the broken records that are stuck in our head, the f***eries and the power plays that are still dominating how we are running our planet, the rising intolerance," he said.
The actor said while Trump had used the pandemic to ban immigration and the Hungarian government to centralise their power, people forget that most of the frontline people fighting against the virus are from ethnic communities.
"I'm looking at the fact it's hitting African-Americans twice as hard; I'm looking at the fact that 50 per cent of NHS frontline workers – is it 50 per cent? – are ethnic minorities," he added.
Riz said he hopes the praise for health workers amid the crisis brings attention to the prejudice against the ethnic minorities that work in the healthcare system.
It, he hoped, also opens up people to create a more inclusive world.
"We say we love the NHS more than the royal family, more than the army, but do we love the people who keep the NHS alive? Because every time we tell people to f*** off back to where they came from, that's not what we're saying. So I really hope that this revelation, this awakening, opens our minds to that reality, to the stupidity of our prejudice." SHD BKBK