Coronavirus: Ethnic Groups

(asked on 4th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the Public Health England review of the effect of covid-19 on BAME communities did not refer to (a) the high proportion of BAME healthcare workers who died from covid-19 and (b) the sociocultural circumstances of BAME victims which affected their exposure to covid-19; and what steps he plans to take to protect BAME communities from covid-19.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 1st July 2020

Public Health England (PHE) led a rapid review to better understand how different factors can impact on how people are affected by COVID-19. This includes analysis of ethnicity, deprivation, age, sex (male and female) and obesity, where surveillance data was available to PHE.

The review also referred to findings from other studies, where possible, including those analysing the deaths of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) National Health Service staff and sociocultural circumstances of BAME communities.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch MP) will be taking forward work to better understand the drivers behind the report’s conclusions and interactions between different risk factors and consider where further data or analysis is needed. The Terms of Reference for that work can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/next-steps-for-work-on-covid-19-disparities-announced

Reticulating Splines