Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, if any, towards instigating an independent inquiry into the number of deaths of BAME NHS and care staff due to COVID-19.
We are very concerned by the apparent disproportionate number of people from minority ethnic backgrounds who have died, both within the National Health Service and overall. We have asked Public Health England to complete a rapid review to understand how COVID-19 may be having an impact on different ethnic groups, and other groups of concern. The terms of reference will be announced in due course.
To complement this rapid review, the National Institute for Health Research and UK Research and Innovation issued a joint call on 22 April for research proposals to investigate emerging evidence of an association between ethnicity and COVID-19 incidence and adverse health outcomes.