UK: Ethnic minorities no longer at higher risk of death from Covid, says report

Ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom (UK) are no longer at a higher risk of death from Covid than white Britons, a report from the Guardian said on Wednesday (February 22) citing data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The ONS data showed that the rates of deaths involving the virus are now substantially lower for all ethnic groups than earlier in the pandemic. During the first and second Covid waves, ethnic minorities had a significantly higher virus mortality rate than white Britons.

During successive lockdowns, ethnic minorities were more likely exposed to Covid as they were more likely to be key workers or live in multi-generational households. Data showed that mortality rates were the highest for Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, black African and black Caribbean groups. By the third and fourth waves (Alpha and Delta waves), deaths came down, but ethnic disparities remained.

Speaking to the Guardian, ONS' senior statistician Vahé Nafilyan said that in the first and second waves, the differences in the mortality rates were largely due to social demographic factors, adding the main reason for these differences was differences in the risk of infection.

“The Delta wave coincided with the rollout of the vaccination campaign, where the uptake of the vaccine was much lower in some groups, such as the black Caribbean and black African groups, compared to the white British group,” He said.

The Omicron variant, meanwhile, causedless severe disease than the Delta variant. The senior statistician also told the Guardian that more and more people got immunity (from Covid) as they had been previously infected.

"So what hasn’t changed in the Omicron period is the gap in vaccination uptake. It has reduced slightly between groups, but it’s still there,” Nafilyan said. He also pointed out that further research was required to look into the level of immunity in different groups, and see whether groups with a lower vaccination rate had a higher level of infection.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the UK has registered over 24.3 million infections, 206,246 deaths and nearly 23 million recoveries. Speaking to the Guardian, Kit Yates from the University of Bath said that it was unclear what was the reason behind the latest figures about ethnic minorities.

Yates, the director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the university, guessed "that there were disparities in terms of exposure levels for different ethnic groups earlier on in the pandemic when we were actively trying to control transmission."

"I suspect that these have now largely dissipated given the unmitigated spread situation in which we have found ourselves for the last year or so,” Yates added. He also said that another possibility was that the impact of vaccines was diminishing.

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