News Desk :
British people of Bangladeshi ethnicity are twice as likely to die from Covid-19 as people of white ethnicity, according to a recent report by Public Health England.
The report, titled “Disparities in the risk and outcomes of Covid-19,” was published on the website of the Government of the UK on Tuesday.
“An analysis of survival among confirmed COVID-19 cases shows that, after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region, people of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death when compared to people of White British ethnicity,” the report said.
“People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10% and 50% higher risk of death when compared to White British,” it added.
According to the report, this trend in the Covid-19 mortality rate is the opposite of what was seen in previous years. In all previous causes of death, the mortality rate was higher for white ethnic groups than other ethnicities.
However, the report also said an important shortcoming in the analysis was that the effect of occupation was not considered, as a high proportion of the workers in certain “key occupations” were from ethnic minorities.
Another flaw in the analysis identified in the report is that the effect of comorbidities and obesity are not considered, and they are more prevalent in members of ethnic minorities.
A total 276,332 cases of Covid-19 have so far been confirmed in the UK, including 39,045 fatalities as of Tuesday, according to Worldometer.
