Hancock says ‘black lives do matter’ in virus fight
BAME people ‘at higher risk of dying from Covid’
HEALTH SECRETARY Matt Hancock has insisted “black lives matter” as he published a new review which found black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people are at significantly higher risk of dying from Covid-19.
The study, from Public Health England (PHE), looked at the risk factors for coronavirus and found BAME individuals have a much higher risk of death than white people, as do those from poorer backgrounds, men and anyone who is obese or suffering from diabetes.
Mr Hancock told the Commons yesterday the evidence showed that coronavirus targets people in an “unequal and disproportionate way”.
Mr Hancock said “black lives matter”, a slogan used as protests erupted around the world over the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who died last week after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.
He said: “Black lives matter, as do those of the poorest areas of our country which have worse health outcomes and we need to make sure all of these considerations are taken into account, and action is taken to level-up the health outcomes of people across this country. Because there’s no more important levelling-up than the levelling-up of your life expectancy and the quality of health with which you live that life.”
Mr Hancock said the Covid-19 epidemic had shown “huge disparities” across the nation, depending on ethnicity and factors such as social deprivation.
“People are understandably angry about injustices and as Health Secretary I feel a deep responsibility because this pandemic has exposed huge disparities in the health of our nation,” he said.
“This work underlines that being black or from a minority ethnic background is a major risk factor. This racial disparity holds even after accounting for the effect of age, deprivation, region and sex.”
The PHE report showed that people of Bangladeshi ethnicity have around twice the risk of death than people who are white British. Those of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity have between a 10 per cent and 50 per cent higher risk of death when compared to white British.
Meanwhile, the highest diagnosis Covid-19 rates per 100,000 population are in black people (486 females and 649 males), and are lowest in white people (220 in females and 224 in males).
Compared to previous years, death from all causes are now almost four times higher than expected among black males, almost three times higher in Asian males and almost two times higher in white males.
Some 39,369 people have now died after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK, up by 324 yesterday. A total of 2,578 people have died in Yorkshire, this rose by 29 yesterday.