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Coronavirus: Ethnic Groups

Question for Department of Health and Social Care

UIN HL3034, tabled on 22 April 2020

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that a higher proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic people are dying as a result of COVID-19 than people of other ethnicities; whether they have now established an inquiry into the issue; and if so, what that inquiry has discovered to date.

Answered on

7 May 2020

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 (PHE) to complete a rapid review to understand how COVID-19 may be having an impact on different ethnic groups, and other groups of concern. PHE has begun linking thousands of existing health records for people who have had COVID-19 in order to gather more robust data.

To complement this rapid review by Public Health England, 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.