{"id":86553,"date":"2020-06-11T06:31:02","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T11:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=86553"},"modified":"2020-06-11T06:31:02","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T11:31:02","slug":"auto-draft-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/06\/11\/auto-draft-25\/","title":{"rendered":"British Report: Black, Asian People Up to Twice as Likely to Die From COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"VOA \u2014 LONDON – A British government report suggests that BAME communities in England \u2014 people from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds \u2014 are up to 50% more likely to die after being infected with COVID-19, compared with white ethnic groups.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report from\u00a0the\u00a0government agency Public Health England suggests people of Bangladeshi origin are most vulnerable, with twice the risk of death from COVID-19\u00a0as\u00a0white British people. Those who are of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani or other Asian ethnicity, as well as Caribbean or other black ethnicity, had a 10%\u00a0to 50%\u00a0higher risk of death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

London\u2019s\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/i>newspaper said the publishing of the report earlier this month had been delayed because ministers were concerned that it could stoke tensions amid the growing Black Lives Matter\u00a0protests across the country. The government did not confirm the story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Britain's<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock arrives in Downing Street in central London on May 1, 2020, for the daily novel coronavirus COVID-19 briefing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following the report\u2019s publication, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said further research was needed. \u201cThere is much more work to do to understand what’s driving these disparities and how the different risk factors interact, and we are absolutely determined to get to the bottom of this and find ways of closing that gap,\u201d Hancock told reporters\u00a0on\u00a0June 2.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The findings of the report support similar recent studies in the United States and Finland.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s not an observation unique to the U.K.,\u201d said\u00a0molecular biologist\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Sterghios\u00a0Moschos\u00a0of the University of Northumbria in a Skype interview with VOA last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has seen more BAME people being affected by this disease,\u201d said Moschos. \u201cSo\u00a0there is a suggestion, and I\u00a0have to\u00a0be very explicit, a suggestion that BAME individuals may have a genetic predisposition that makes them more susceptible to the disease.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other scientists believe the causes are rooted in societal inequality and cultural differences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr.\u00a0Muhammad Munir, a lecturer in biomedicine at the\u00a0University of Lancaster,\u00a0told VOA\u00a0in a June 4\u00a0Skype interview that\u00a0he spoke from personal experience on the added risks faced by people of South Asian origin, pointing to \u201cthe social status, the way people are being congested in multigenerational occupancies, and the overall exposure the BAME group has in the community.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Birmingham property developer Amer Awan, who is of Pakistani origin, lost his 67-year-old father, Nazir Awan, to COVID-19 on April 9. He suspects cultural practices are to blame for higher death rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you have brothers and sisters all living in three, four houses next door to each other. And they\u2019re just probably very oblivious to the fact that this thing is so\u00a0serious,\u00a0and they didn\u2019t take much notice of that. They were literally going into each other\u2019s houses,\u201d\u00a0Awan told the AFP news agency shortly after his father\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the fact that when the government closed down mosques, for example, in the community some people were inviting people into their houses and\u00a0saying,\u00a0‘Let\u2019s do the Friday prayers here.\u2019 \u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
A security guard takes the temperature of a customer wanting to enter an Asian supermarket in the Chinatown district of London on May 13, 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ethnic minorities may also be concentrated in certain high-risk occupations, says Munir.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, 13%\u00a0of the U.K. population is BAME\u00a0[but]\u00a0it is more than 44%\u00a0of NHS [National Health Service] doctors that are from BAME groups. We can still identify that Pakistani, Bangladeshi origin \u2014 they are more exposed and have a more severe impact than Chinese and Indians have. So that also highlights that the genetics is probably not the major difference.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That suggestion comes as\u00a0Black Lives Matter\u00a0protests\u00a0are\u00a0erupting in the United\u00a0States, Britain and around the world\u00a0in the wake of the death of 46-year-old George Floyd, a black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scientists say there needs to be much more investigation and it\u2019s too early to pinpoint what is to blame\u00a0for the disparity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 LONDON – A British government report suggests that BAME communities in England \u2014 people from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds \u2014 are up to 50% more likely to die after being infected with COVID-19, compared with white ethnic groups.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The report from\u00a0the\u00a0government agency Public Health England suggests people of Bangladeshi origin are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}