UK to review disproportionate COVID-19 impact on Indians, ethnic minorities

The UK government on Thursday said that it will be launching a review into the disproportionately greater impact of COVID-19 among black and minority ethnic (BAME) communities, including those of Indian origin.

Downing Street said that Public Health England and NHS England will be leading this probe into the factors behind the higher death rates among these communities as well as more severe symptoms of coronavirus.

This is a really important piece of work which I have commissioned. We have seen, both across the population as a whole but in those who work in the NHS, a much higher proportion who've died from minority backgrounds and that really worries me, said UK health secretary Matt Hancock.

"I pay tribute to the work they've done, including those who were born here, moved here, and given that service to the NHS. It's a really important thing that we must try to fully understand," he said.

The Opposition Labour Party, which had joined the medical community's calls for such a review, said it welcomed the initiative into the disturbing impact of COVID-19 on BAME communities but called for more details.

It is not yet clear whether it will be independent, when it will be concluded and who will be leading it, said Marsha de Cordova, Labour's Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary.

She stressed that the government must ensure the review is robust and looks into the underlying structural economic and social inequalities that have affected BAME communities in this crisis.

It must also urgently record data broken down by ethnicity on the number of people who have died as a result of COVID-19. The devastating effect of COVID-19 on BAME communities cannot be overstated. This review must be the first step in ensuring that all communities are equally protected from this virus, she said.

A report by the UK's Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) last week revealed the country's ethnic minority population is more likely to require intensive care admissions, nearly triple the 13 per cent proportion in the UK population as a whole.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the Indian-origin Council Chair of the British Medical Association (BMA), had also called for the authorities to urgently investigate the factors behind the "disproportionate" numbers of BAME doctors among the frontline fatalities from the deadly virus.

We have heard the virus does not discriminate between individuals but there's no doubt there appears to be a manifest disproportionate severity of infection in BAME people and doctors. This has to be addressed the government must act now, he said.

The British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) had taken steps to conduct its own research into the issue and reached out to the health authorities for more data because Indian-origin doctors, who make up a large chunk of the NHS workforce, are already among the victims of the deadly virus in the UK.

The reasons behind this trend will not be any one thing but a complex set of factors, be it Vitamin D deficiency, the lack of social distancing measures within a large Indian family household set up or a genetic predisposition. We will know only once we have the relevant data to analyse, said Dr Ramesh Mehta, President of BAPIO.

It is important to analyse the factors behind these differentiating factors so that communities can put additional preventive measures in place, he said.