Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the tweet by the Department of Health and Social Care on 4 May that “There is emerging evidence to suggest that coronavirus may be having a disproportionate impact on some ethnic groups, as well as certain genders”, on what evidence they base their statement that gender affects the impact of COVID-19; what is their definition of gender when making that statement; how many affected genders they believe there to be; which are those affected genders; what consideration they gave to using the phrase “male” in place of “certain genders”; and what plans they have to use such a formulation in future.

The Government is concerned by the apparent disparities in how COVID-19 is affecting people. We have asked Public Health England to complete a rapid review to understand how COVID-19 may be having an impact on different groups of concern.

Short descriptions of the terms ‘sex’, ‘gender’, ‘transgender’ and ‘gender identity’ have been published by the Government Equalities Office.