'No Lessons Learnt' As Intensive Care Beds Fill With BAME Covid Patients – Again
Nearly a third of Covid patients admitted to intensive care since September are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds – meaning the second wave of the pandemic is hitting ethnic minorities as badly as the first.
Yet it is four months since Public Health England made a string of recommendations to the government to address the alarming rates of illness and death among minority groups from coronavirus – and more than six months since the problem became clear.
Ministers were warned again last month that their inaction would lead to a repeat of the devastation that hit BAME communities earlier this year.
Now data from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre reveal that, since September 1, some 31% of critically ill Covid patients have been from BAME backgrounds. That is just shy of the 34% recorded during the first wave, and more than twice the proportion of BAME people in the English and Welsh population (14%).
A leading doctor who first flagged the disproportionate impact of the virus on BAME peopledescribed the situation as “Groundhog Day” and said he felt “deeply let down” that nothing seems to have been done to protect BAME people at higher risk from Covid-19.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) and a GP in north London, was one of the first people to highlight the disproportionate impact Covid-19 appeared to be having on BAME communities and urged the government to investigate in early April.
One of the factors that troubled him and led to him calling for urgent government action were figures published by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) that revealed a third of people admitted to intensive care due to Covid-19 by that point had been from the BAME population.
Just over a week ago, the figures for the second wave were even worse: 38.3% of Covid patients admitted to intensive care during the second wave were from BAME backgrounds.
“It is extremely upsetting and I...
