People from Black and Asian communities are at a higher risk of Covid-19 severity and death: Study

According to a new study, people from the black community have an increased risk of getting admitted to hospital after contracting coronavirus, while patients from Asian community have an increased risk of dying from the virus, compared to their white counterparts.

The study was published on Friday in the journal EClinicalMedicine. The study was led by researchers at King’s College London, in collaboration with the NIHR Guy’s and St Thomas’ Biomedical Research Centre and the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

The researchers collected data from 1,827 adult patients admitted to King’s College Hospital, south-east London, with a primary diagnosis of Covid-19 between March 1-June 2 this year.

The researchers then examined the relationship between ethnic background and SARS-CoV-2.

The researchers stated in their study that minority ethnic patients have a high risk of getting severe coronavirus. Black patients and Asian patients are also affected at different stages of the disease.

Professor Ajay Shah, BHF Professor of Cardiology at King's College London and Consultant Cardiologist at King's College Hospital, said: “The finding that Black and Asian patients are affected in quite different ways, and that significant risk persists even after adjustment for deprivation and long-term health conditions, is striking.”

Different treatment strategies

He added: “It strongly suggests that other factors, possibly biological, are important and that we may need different treatment strategies for different ethnic groups. For Black patients, the issue may be how to prevent mild infection progressing to severe whereas for Asian patients it may be how to treat life-threatening complications.”

Researchers examined the prevalence of fatality in this group. They compared a subset of 872 admitted patients from inner south-east London with 3,488 matched controls residing in the same region. This was carried out to determine how ethnic background are more susceptible to the severity of the disease.

Of these 872 admitted patients, 48.1 per cent were Black, 33.7 per cent White, 12.6 per cent Mixed and 5.6 per cent were of Asian ethnicity.

Their findings revealed that Black and Mixed ethnicity patients have a three-fold higher risk of requiring hospital admission once infected with Covid-19 compared to White inner-city residents of the same region. However, their survival rate was almost the same as White patients.

By contrast, Asian patients did not have a higher risk of getting hospitalised. However, their in-hospital death rate was higher than other ethnic groups.

Biological factors

The authors of the study believe that the increased risk is not only triggered by the socio-economic challenges the minority communities face but also biological factors which affect different subgroups in different ways.

Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation said: “People from Black, Asian and other Minority Ethnic backgrounds more often have heart and circulatory risk factors including high blood pressure and diabetes and are more exposed to socioeconomic disadvantage, but this study indicates the worse effects of Covid-19 are present even after these are accounted for.”

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