Published Thursday 18 June 2020 at 9:17
Our Director of Public Health and Wellbeing, Professor Dominic Harrison, has written another column for the Lancashire Telegraph: We’re NOT all in the same boat when it comes to coronavirus death risks.
Read it here:
We may be all in the same storm with Covid-19 but we are not all in the same boat.
This week Public Health England reported on the second part of its national research on inequalities in the Covid-19 pandemic. Much of it confirms what we already know.
The Office of National statistics (ONS) have reported the stark Covid-19 divide between rich and poor. Those in the wealthiest 10% of the population have a rate of 25.3 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 population but in the poorest 10% of the population it is 55.1 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000. Double the risk.
ONS also report sharp differences in occupational mortality. Compared with the rate among people of the same sex and age in England and Wales, men working in the lowest skilled occupations have the highest rate of death involving Covid-19.
Men working as security guards have one of the highest rates, with 45.7 deaths per 100,000 and taxi drivers and chauffeurs (36.4 deaths per 100,000).
Data published by the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine suggests that for BAME communities, excess deaths (observed vs. expected) are around 1.5 times higher than expected for the Indian population, 2.8 times higher for the Pakistani population, and 3 times higher for Bangladeshis. Excess deaths are 4.3 times higher for the Black African population, 2.5 times for the Black Caribbean population.
Those on low incomes and BAME communities experience a ‘triple risk effect’.
They are more exposed to Covid-19 risks- often through the front line work they do, they are more vulnerable to harm from Covid-19 -often because of higher rates of preventable disease like type 2 diabetes and they may have worse consequences from those additional risks.
Our own local research on all hospitalised cases of Covid-19 in East Lancashire Hospitals Trust from 1st March to 18th May shows that we too also have stark inequalities by race- but our local outcomes are better than the national average.
Of all those hospitalised with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, South Asian residents have been admitted at twice the rate we would expect if all was equal across each ethnic group, but the rate of deaths was about half what we would expect- largely because they were on average, much younger.
Most of the additional risk appears to be socially not genetically determined. The additional risks arise because of the way society is organised.
This affects the way life chances favour some and not others in ways that are unjust, unfair and avoidable. If we truly believe ‘that every single human life is as precious as every other single human life – then this absolutely has to change.
Many of us are working hard across Pennine Lancashire just now to make sure it does.
You can also find it on the Lancashire Telegraph website.