Coronavirus: Let patients disclose ethnicity in symptom tracker to monitor ‘disproportionate’ impact on Bame groups, say MPs

Ministers have been urged to let people list their ethnicity on the NHS coronavirus symptom tracker amid concerns about the “disproportionate impact” of Covid-19 on black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) communities.

NHS bosses are leading a formal review into whether Bame people are more likely to die from coronavirus after initial figures showed patients from ethnic minority backgrounds were overrepresented in intensive care units.

A report by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre on the first 3,883 critically ill Covid-19 patients found that more than a third were non-white (33.6 per cent). Bame groups form just 18 per cent of the UK population.

While Bame staff make up around 44 per cent of NHS medics, the first 10 UK doctors who died from coronavirus were all from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.

Amid growing alarm about the lack of comprehensive data, Liberal Democrat MPs Layla Moran and Munira Wilson have called on the government to improve monitoring of the impact of the virus on certain communities.

In a letter to the health secretary Matt Hancock and the equalities minister Liz Truss, the MPs said patients should be given the option to disclose their ethnicity and gender on the NHS’s online coronavirus symptom survey.

They said: “This is all part of creating a strategy for addressing coronavirus’s disproportionate impact on people who are Bame.”

The review, led by Public Health England, must be open to scrutiny from MPs and given a firm timetable for completion, the Liberal Democrat MPs added.

Munira Wilson, the party’s health spokesperson, told The Independent: “The data from UK hospitals showing that Bame groups are disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 is alarming.

“Yet we don’t have a complete picture to confirm the extent of these trends in the UK as some key data simply isn’t being collected.

“That is why we’re asking the government to add a question on ethnicity to the official NHS coronavirus survey.

“This data will be vital in informing our response to and management of this virus, making sure that all communities get the support they need.”

Officials at Public Health England are reportedly gathering data about the ethnicity of patients who die in hospitals and other healthcare settings but this leaves a gap on how the virus is hitting people in the community.

Dr Zubaida Haque, deputy director of the Runnymede Trust, tweeted: “If you’re not disaggregating by ethnicity, that means we have no idea whether there is any racial disproportionality at all.

“If you don’t ask the questions in data, then you don’t have answers. If you don’t measure it, then that problem doesn’t exist.”

Chief medical officer Chris Whitty previously told a Downing Street press conference that it was “less clear” that ethnicity was a factor than other issues such as age, sex and pre-existing medical conditions.

The coronavirus death rate for men was twice as high as that for women in England and Wales, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics released on Thursday.

Other factors such as increased risk of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, socio-economic background or geographical location may also play a role in higher prevalence among Bame patients.

A recent BMG poll for The Independent revealed Bame households were being hit harder by lockdown measures, with 46 per cent saying their household income had reduced as a result of coronavirus, against 28 per cent of white British families.

Some 15 per cent of respondents from ethnic minorities said they had lost their job, compared with 8 per cent of white Britons.