Coronavirus: Ethnic Groups

(asked on 29th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish data on the ethnicity of people (a) infected and (b) who have died of covid-19 by (i) age and (ii) English region in (A) hospitals and (B) in the community; whether demographic data on covid-19 deaths can be provided in real-time; and how that data will be collected.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 12th May 2020

Data on those infected with COVID-19 are collected by Public Health England (PHE) for new diagnoses and hospitalised patients. Standard recording practice across laboratory systems requires recording of only minimal data (such as date of birth and name) as these records are not intended for disease surveillance purposes.

PHE has begun a rapid review to better understand how COVID-19 may be having an impact on different ethnic groups. As part of this review, PHE is matching thousands of laboratory records of COVID-19 cases to other health records to draw down accurate data on ethnicity, age, sex and geographical region. The first results will be published by the end of May.

NHS England and NHS Improvement lead on reporting deaths with confirmed COVID-19 in hospital. They publish a daily summary that includes a breakdown by ethnicity which can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

The Office for National Statistics publishes provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving COVID-19, by age, sex and region, in the latest weeks for which data are available. These data can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending24april2020

The Public Health England COVID-19 dashboard shows the number of cases confirmed by NHS/PHE labs for each region and upper tier local authority in England. The dashboard can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-track-coronavirus-cases

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