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Coronavirus: Asian experts say Oxford study showing higher hospital death rate among non-whites suggests socioeconomic, not genetic effects
- The British study found that Asian and black patients were 1.62 and 1.71 times more likely to die, respectively, than their white counterparts
- Such unequal outcomes are linked to social and economic factors that affect how members of these communities live and work, the experts said
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Asian public health experts say socioeconomic factors rather than genetics are likely to be behind findings of a British study that showed Asian and black people are more likely to die of Covid-19 in hospital than those of white ethnicity.
Data on the pandemic’s spread from countries in Asia and the Caribbean, and past research, suggest it is rare for an infectious disease to affect certain ethnicities more than others, the experts said.
The study, by researchers from the University of Oxford and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and released on May 7, looked at the records of more than 17 million British patients, including 5,638 who had died from Covid-19 up to April 16 – covering 40 per cent of the UK population.
It included patients’ baseline characteristics such as diagnoses, medications and physiological parameters and found that higher levels of deprivation and existing medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes only accounted for “a small part of the excess risk” of death.
Instead, it concluded that members of Britain’s ethnic minority groups were at higher risk because they tend to work frontline jobs and live in more crowded households.
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