A recent study has examined that the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities have suffered four times greater number of coronavirus infections than their white counterparts.
Published on Monday 7th December, The Guardian analysis of England’s 10 worst-hit council areas found disparities in the effect of Covid-19 on residents living alongside one another, with densely packed BAME communities bearing the brunt of the pandemic. The paper examines that in Blackburn with Darwen, which has experienced the UK’s highest coronavirus cases per capita, the contrast between neighbouring areas is stark. One in 10 people have had the virus in Bastwell, where 85.7% of residents come from a BAME background – four times higher than a neighbourhood five miles away where only 2% of people are non-white. It dissects more than 300 neighbourhoods comprising nearly 2.7 million people in England’s 10 local authorities with the highest infection rates, almost all of which are post-industrial towns in the north-west.
It also found that across England places with higher average earnings were more likely to have fewer Covid-19 cases. But in the 10 worst-hit local authorities, an area’s proportion of BAME residents had a stronger correlation to its case rate, compared with salary, age and deprivation.
In these 10 worst-hit councils, the 26 areas with a majority of BAME residents and an average salary of below £25,000 had experienced 7.1 cases per 100 people. This is almost double the average rate in the 22 mostly white areas where most people earn more than £35,000 a year.
In a statement to The Guardian, Lord Kerslake, chair of the 2070 commission into city and regional inequalities in the UK, said the findings proved “Covid has not been a leveller. Nor has the economic fallout been a leveller.”
