Black people four times more likely to die from coronavirus

The Office of National Statistics has reported that black people are more than four times more likely to die from coronavirus than white people.

The official figures show that the difference in the virus’s impact was not only caused by pre-existing differences in communities’ wealth, health, education and living arrangements, but, after taking into account age, measures of self-reported health and disability and other socio-demographic characteristics, black people were still almost twice as likely as white people to die a coronavirus-related death.

The risk of coronavirus death for people from Chinese and mixed ethnic groups was found to be similar to that for white people, but Bangladeshi and Pakistani males were 1.8 times more likely to die from the virus than white males, after other pre-existing factors had been accounted for, and females from those ethnic groups were 1.6 times more likely to die from the virus than their white counterparts.

The ONS said: “These results show that the difference between ethnic groups in Covid-19 mortality is partly a result of socio-economic disadvantage and other circumstances, but a remaining part of the difference has not yet been explained.”

The figures, covering deaths from 2 March to 10 April, are the first official snapshot of the way that coronavirus has affected different ethnic groups in England and Wales.