Working class men, BAME groups and elderly ALL more likely to die of Covid, official review finds

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WORKING class men, people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities and the elderly are ALL more likely to die of COVID-19 if they catch it, an official review has found.

The shocking findings come after the deaths of many NHS and social care workers from BAME backgrounds.

Men from working class backgrounds, people from BAME communities and the elderly are more likely to die from coronavirus

The review into the risk factors of dying from coronavirus said: “The largest disparity found was by age.

“Among people already diagnosed with COVID19, people who were 80 or older were seventy times more likely to die than those under 40.

“Risk of dying among those diagnosed with COVID-19 was also higher in males than females.

“(It is) higher in those living in the more deprived areas than those living in the least deprived and higher in those in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups than in White ethnic groups.”

It added that people from black ethnic groups were most likely to be diagnosed with coronavirus, and the death rates were highest among people who are black or Asian.

The review said: “This is the opposite of what is seen in previous years, when the mortality rates were lower in Asian and Black ethnic groups than White ethnic groups.

“Therefore, the disparity in COVID-19 mortality between ethnic groups is the opposite of that seen in previous years.”

It found people of Bangladeshi heritage are twice as likely as whites to die from Covid as white people.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said age was the “biggest risk factor” and people aged 80 or older are 70 times more likely to die than those under 40.

Being male was also a “significant risk factor” he added, with working age men twice as likely to die as working age women. Occupation was a risk factor.

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 ethnicity analysis did not adjust for factors such as comorbidities and obesity, so there is much more work to do to understand the key drivers of these disparities, the relationships between the different risk factors and what we can do to close the gap.”
The review has been called for for weeks after NHS workers and social care staff from BAME were dying disproportionately to their white colleagues.

It also found that in comparisons to previous years there had been a particularly high increase in all causes of deaths among those born outside the UK and Ireland.

It added that those working in health and social care settings were more likely to die.

It also said those who had continued working despite the lockdown including those who drive passengers for a living such as cab drivers had a higher chance of dying of coronavirus.

But the report warning: “These analyses do not take into account the existence of co-morbidites, which are strongly associated with the risk of death from COVID-19 and could explain some of these differences.”