South Asians in UK ‘face Covid risk’

Local health director warns of ‘third phase’ of cases linked to people living in densely populated homes

SOUTH Asian communities face the biggest risk from coronavirus, a Government-backed study has shown, as Blackburn’s public health director warned of a “third phase” in the pandemic’s spread. A wide-scale testing exercise by Imperial College London in May found prevalence among people from an Asian background was 0.24 per cent, compared with 0.13 per cent among white people and 0.17 among the black community.

The researchers say the study’s Asian participants are “predominantly” of south Asian heritage.

The results were published alongside warnings of a “rising tide” of infections in densely populated terraced houses in north-west England, which has large south Asian communities.

Dominic Harrison, the director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen council, said the borough recorded 114 new cases in the past fortnight, 97 from the south Asian population.

He told the Lancashire Telegraph the outbreaks were a new phase in the crisis. He said the initial phase involved “older, wealthier, ethnically ‘white British’ people who were infected abroad and returned to the UK from holidays in Italy, France and Spain”.

“In the second phase, during March and April, most were infected both by wider community spread and within hospitals and care home settings.”

Although newly confirmed cases were down to fewer than 10 a day in most of the Pennine Lancashire local authorities, said Mr Harrison, “in this third phase of the pandemic, we can see a higher percentage of those newly diagnosed over the past two weeks are from south Asian heritage communities”.

“There is a clustering of cases in larger multi-generational households in areas characterised by smaller terraced housing,” he said. “In some ways, it looks like this pattern of spread has returned to the start – smaller numbers with an index case infected their whole family through household transmission.”

On Sunday, a leaked Government document highlighted a swathe of northern areas such as Kirklees, Bradford and Blackburn and marked them as either a cause for “concern” or in need of “enhanced” support after recording higher than average infection rates, following the imposition of the first local lockdown in Leicester.

Local officials have only been granted access to postcode-level data by central government in recent weeks, allowing them to build a granular picture of local outbreaks.

However, there have been reports that councils are reluctant to publish the localised figures for fear of damaging community cohesion.

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has raised the issue at Cabinet meetings, according to Huffpost UK.

Last night, Dr Sakthi Karunanithi, the director of public health for Lancashire, urged residents to wear masks in indoor public places, appealing for help to keep the area out of lockdown. Blackburn with Darwen has 11.7 per cent of households with five or more occupants, Pendle 8.8 per cent and Hyndburn 7.3 per cent – the North West regional average is 6.4 per cent, according to Mr Harrison.

“We have what we call a rising tide event rather than an outbreak,” he told the BBC.

“We have a number of cases rising in specific areas across a significant community, but not a single big outbreak like Kirklees or other areas that had a workplace outbreak.

“What we’re seeing from looking at postcode data is a single case being infected, then going back to a household and all of that household getting infected.”

‘We have a number of cases rising in specific areas across a community, but not a single big outbreak’