Coronavirus

[Graham Breeze]

The question of how and why this is hitting BAME communities has featured in the last few days. I'm not sure if there is concrete evidence out there yet, but they perhaps have a preponderance to closer social contact than other demographics.

I haven't got to grips with this, whether it is a higher percentage of those communities catching it, or a higher percentage that catch it need hospital treatment and end up in intensive care, or a higher percentage of those in intensive care actually die?

The first should not be too difficult to possibly explain through lifestyles, the next two are not so easy. But I haven't seen it explained as to which it is?

Because what is needed is a robust statistical analysis. It is very easy to jump to wrong conclusions.

My g.daughter is part of the Covid 19 team at St James, Leeds so she has been dealing with Covid 19 patients everyday for weeks and pointed this out to her mother (also a Nurse) long before the media woke up. I have also discussed it (as part of general Covid 19 discussions) with my son (a Consultant at Leeds General). There are many intriguing aspects to the disease eg the male/female morbidity differences, children/adult, obesity factor etc and BAME communities may be one.

The DT today reports on the - much more straightforward - obesity factor as "not clear" and quotes Prof. Openshaw who provides three different reasons which may be a factor!