COVID-19 and disparities affecting ethnic minorities

The disproportionate effects of COVID-19 among minority ethnic groups were present from the beginning, with Black and Asian patients in the UK being over-represented among those with COVID-19 receiving advanced respiratory support.1 Analysis of data from Public Health England later highlighted that deaths from COVID-19 among people from minority ethnic groups were two to four times greater than those among the White population in England.2 Several reasons for these differences were considered, including a higher prevalence of comorbidities associated with poor COVID-19 outcomes (eg, type 2 diabetes among British South Asians), greater social deprivation, large multigenerational households, differences in occupational risk, and delayed access to health care, which all disproportionally affect minority ethnic groups.3,4 Despite these concerns, public health recommendations specifically targeted for ethnic minority groups at the time were limited. The value of being able to analyse routinely collected health data at scale to support the rapid implementation of public health and medicine regulatory recommendations using secure data platforms has been proven during the pandemic.9,10 An ongoing issue remains the lack of adequate mandatory ethnic coding in National Health Service (NHS) medical records, compounding the difficulty in identifying the actual scale of health inequalities. Education Images/Getty Images DRM is supported by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Development Fellowship (grant 214588/Z/18/Z) and reports grants from the Chief Scientist Office, Health Data Research UK, the National Institute of Health Research, and Tenovus, outside of the area of work commented on here.