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A report, from Public Health England (PHE), has looked at the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups.
Prof Kamlesh Khunti, Professor of Primary Care Diabetes and Vascular Medicine, University of Leicester, said:
“This is a well awaited report. The report certainly gives more detail with results of a rapid review of published literature and on stakeholder. The report makes 7 recommendations many of which seem obvious but does not give a huge amount of detail on how these can be implemented and over what timeframe.”
Dr Amitava Banerjee, Associate Professor in Clinical Data Science and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist, Institute of Health Informatics, UCL, said:
“It is a relief to finally see the full findings of the PHE report published. Whether from the national Intensive Care National Audit Research Centre(ICNARC), large-scale primary care data (such as the OPEN SAFELY collaboration led by Ben Goldacre, University of Oxford) or Office of National Statistics mortality data, we already know that BAME individuals, particularly those Black African and Black Afro-Caribbean are at least 50-100% more likely to die from COVID-19 than their white counterparts, depending on ethnicity and “other factors”. What those “other factors” are is what this report addresses through a rapid review of evidence (quantitative) and impressive stakeholder engagement (qualitative), involving 17 sessions with 4000 participants.
“The review of evidence confirms the observation of excess mortality in BAME people, especially in black communities, and highlights that existing and well-documented health (e.g. increased risk of multimorbidity and reduced access to care), social (overcrowding and use of public transport) and economic inequalities are likely to contribute. Therefore the “causes of causes”, in Sir Michael Marmot’s terminology, are crucial, even in the COVID-19 context, and the solution has to go to the root causes of ethnic inequalities in health.
“The stakeholder engagement suggests that pre-existing social and economic inequalities are being exacerbated and are likely to be more important in the excess COVID-19 deaths in BAME individuals than pre-existing health inequalities. Importantly, there are structural barriers which BAME communities have faced, including access to protective equipment and less ability to complain about it. Trust and fairness were seen by many to be the most important levers to improve the status quo.
“In summary, the report recommends, on the basis of good science, that (i) better recording of ethnicity is required in all routine health and social care data; (ii) transparency of data and reports; (iii) policy planning and implementation should take account of the possibility of widening inequalities, and the ways to mitigate them; and (iv) working across sectors and disciplines to tackle the causes. Overall the excess deaths in BAME people due to COVID-19 are due not only to racism, but much more to do with ethnic inequalities in the social and economic determinants of health, which require urgent action. Therefore the solutions have to be both short- and long-term. I do not see what further reports and commissions can add beyond these detailed data.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-understanding-the-impact-on-bame-communities
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
None received.