Virus tests ‘should be priority in deprived districts’
THE GOVERNMENT must implement a health-inequalities strategy to protect deprived and minority communities and tackle the hidden health effects of Covid-19, Labour has said.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said testing should be prioritised in the most deprived areas and in places with a high proportion of black, Asian and ethnic minority residents.
The “disproportionate impact in such communities” could not be ignored, he said.
Labour’s call comes after data from the Office for National Statistics showed black people were more than four times as likely as whites to die from Covid-19.
Bangladeshi and Pakistani males were 1.8 times more likely to die from the virus than white males, and females from those ethnic groups were 1.6 times more likely to die.
Mr Ashworth also called for resources to ensure inequalities did not worsen as the NHS resumed “normal” activity and for a Covid-19 health-inequalities commission to be set up to ensure the social and economic effects of lockdown did not worsen existing disparities.
Labour said the growing burden of unmet clinical need risked widening health inequalities, after the British Medical Association warned that many people were not receiving the treatment they needed for non Covid-19 illnesses during the pandemic.
Mr Ashworth said: “Coronavirus thrives on inequality. And inequality in health is the worst inequality of all, leading to people dying sooner because of poverty.
“Ministers must act. As well as increasing testing further to all health-care workers, community testing and tracing should be rolled out in areas of deprivation, where the health impact is greatest, as a priority.”