Risk of dying from coronavirus higher for ethnic minorities

Public Health England has said that people from ethnic minorities are at a higher risk of dying from coronavirus.

A new report from the organisation shows that age remains the biggest risk factor, while being male is another. However, removing age and sex, the report finds that people of Bangladeshi ethnicity have twice the risk of death than people of white British ethnicity.

The impact of coronavirus is also ‘disproportionate’ for other Asian, Caribbean and black ethnicities, although, at this stage, it remains unclear why.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock conceded that the pandemic has ‘exposed huge disparities in the health of our nation’, with ethnic background being a ‘major risk factor’ for coronavirus.

Marsha de Cordova, the Labour MP for Battersea in London, said the report was ‘notably silent’ on how risks amplified by ‘racial and health inequalities’ could be reduced, adding that the government must act immediately to mitigate the risks ‘so that no more lives are lost’.

The report discovered that people aged 80 or older are 70 times more likely to die than those under 40, whilst working-age men diagnosed with the virus are twice as likely to die as women. Public Health England also says that certain occupations, chiefly security guards, taxi or bus drivers and construction workers and social care staff, are at higher risk.