Black, Asian and ethnic minorities appear to be disproportionately affected by Covid-19 in the UK. The government is launching an inquiry into why this is the case. However, we don’t currently have enough public data to be able to understand how minorities are being impacted by the virus.

What data is collected about the ethnicity of people affected by Covid-19?

There is limited information about how the virus is affecting different populations in the UK. Data about ethnicity is collected in healthcare settings in England and Wales; however, it is not recorded on death certificates. This means that we have some insights into who is in critical care but it is not possible to tell exactly who is dying with Covid-19 based on existing mortality statistics.

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What does the data show?

Black, Asian and minority patients are over-represented in critical care and account for a third of patients in hospital, despite making up a quarter of the population in the same areas.

Research from the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre shows that Asian patients make up 14.4% and black patients accounted for 11.9% of all those in critical care. However, when the figures are matched to the local population, black patients are over-represented at a rate of double the local population.

There is currently no publicly available data about deaths by ethnicity in the UK. This is crucial to understanding who is being impacted by the virus.

Why is there no data on who is dying?

We are expecting to get data on deaths in healthcare settings in England from Public Health England in the coming weeks. However, as ethnicity is not collected on death certificates in England and Wales, data on fatalities outside of hospital will need to be matched to the population by the Office for National Statistics. Scotland introduced ethnicity in death certification in 2012.

Veena Raleigh, senior fellow at the King’s Fund, specialises in health inequalities and has been involved in discussions relating to adding ethnicity data to health records.

Raleigh says: “When the early anti-discrimination legislation was introduced, from the 1970s onwards, there was a move to include ethnicity in all health and medical records… Given reports that people from black and minority ethnic groups are over-represented among those dying from Covid-19, I think the issue of ethnic coding in death certification is likely to resurface and it’s time for this to be revisited.”