Ethnic minorities at higher risk of dying from COVID-19: study

A UK study concludes British people from black, Asian and other ethnic minorities have a higher risk of dying from coronavirus.

A UK study has concluded British people from black, Asian and other ethnic minorities have a higher risk of dying from coronavirus. Picture: AFP

British people descended from Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, the Caribbean or have other black ethnicity have a higher risk of dying from coronavirus, a Public Health England study has uncovered.

The study backs up earlier anecdotal evidence that people from BAME groups (black, Asian and minority ethnic) have been suffering disproportionately from the coronavirus across the United Kingdom.

UK Health secretary Matt Hancock said told the House of Commons that ethnicity was a “major risk factor” in coronavirus outcomes.

Britain's Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Picture: AP

“Black lives matter, as do those of the poorest areas of our country which have worse health outcomes and we need to make sure all of these considerations are taken into account, and action is taken to level-up the health outcomes of people across this country,” he said.

“Because there’s no more important levelling-up than the levelling-up of your life expectancy and the quality of health with which you live that life.”

Mr Hancock said people are understandably angry about injustices.

“I feel a deep responsibility because this pandemic has exposed huge disparities in the health of our nation,” he said.

“This work underlines that being black or from a minority ethnic background is a major risk factor.”

Public Health England released the report on Tuesday and said: “after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region, people of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death than people of White British ethnicity. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50 per cent higher risk of death when compared to White British.”

The study’s authors said the analysis didn’t account for occupation – with higher risk of death and illness in frontline medical workers and public transport drivers – nor comorbidities such as diabetes or obesity.

The authors said comorbidities and obesity increased the risk of acquiring coronavirus and dying.

Despite making up 46 per cent of diagnosed cases, men make up almost 60 per cent of deaths from COVID-19 and 70 per cent of admissions to intensive care units.

The study said: “It is not yet fully clear what drives the differences in outcomes between males and females. Some could be driven by different risks of acquiring the infection – for example due to behavioural and occupational factors – and by differences in how women and men develop symptoms, access care and are diagnosed, or by biological and immune differences that put men at greater risk.”

An analysis of survival among people with confirmed coronavirus by sex, age group, ethnicity, deprivation and region, compared various age groupings to people under 40. The probability of death was about three times higher among those aged 40 to 49, nine times higher among those aged 50 to 59, twenty-seven times higher among those aged 60 to 69, fifty times higher among those aged 70 to 79 and seventy times higher among those aged 80 and over.