Why are so many black and ethnic minority people dying from coronavirus?
Mr Chowdhury, who worked as a consultant urologist at Homerton Hospital in east London, said in his post: “People appreciate us and salute us for our rewarding job which are very inspirational but I would like to say we have to protect ourselves and our families/kids in this global disaster/crisis by using appropriate PPE and remedies.”
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA council chair welcomed the review but stressed it must be informed by real-time data to understand why the virus appears to be disproportionately affecting BAME communities and healthcare workers.
“This must include daily updates on ethnicity, circumstance and all protected characteristics of all patients in hospital as well as levels of illness in the community which is not currently recorded,” Dr Nagpaul said.
“The government must send a directive to every hospital telling them to record the ethnicity of patients who are admitted and succumb to COVID immediately.”
Why are there more BAME coronavirus patients?
Last week, data on patients with confirmed Covid-19 from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) suggested ethnic minorities are over-represented compared with the general population.
Of 1,966 patients with Covid-19, the ICNARC said 64.8 per cent were white, 13.6 per cent black, 13.8 per cent Asian, and 6.6 per cent were described as other.
Around 7.5 per cent of the population were Asian and 3.3 per cent black in the 2011 UK census.
The first 10 doctors named as having died from Covid-19 in the UK were from BAME communities – a figure that the Labour Party described as “deeply disturbing”.
Some analysts have suggested that the burden of coronavirus falls on poorer communities, in which BAME people are over-represented.