Thread by @NickStripe_ONS

THREAD - Ethnicity and COVID

What have we learnt today?

There are currently unexplained differences in the risk of being infected with and/or dying with COVID by ethnic group

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We can explain approximately half of these differences by adjusting for things like age, geography, deprivation and socio-economic factors

Of these, geography is the biggest factor

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Once adjusting for these we are left with the following risk ratios compared to the broad white ethnic group:

- Black males & females c.90% higher risk (ratio of 1.9)

- Bangladeshi/Pakistani males c.80% higher, females c.60%

- Indian females c.40% higher, males c.30%

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We provide lower and upper confidence intervals for all our findings

Our denominator is the 2011 Census population still alive and still in the country (approx. 50m). We linked death registrations to the Census to obtain ethnicity and some socio-economic characteristics

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Report here
ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

Risk ratios here
ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

Technical paper here
ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

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We know from our earlier reports that age, sex and geographical location including in terms of area deprivation are important factors

A further paper was released today from a team led by Ben Goldacre (Uni of Oxf) and Liam Smeeth (LSHTM) looking at in hospital deaths

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Their paper finds reassuringly similar associations as well as containing extra information on e.g. medical / health conditions

It is well worth a read and adds further important evidence and insight

Report here
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

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For ethnicity their findings show an adjusted Hazard Ratio of c.1.7 for the black group and c.1.6 for the Asian group

Further research needed. Ideally for us including health conditions and occupations for all household members. Neither are straightforward in terms of data

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