Member

The pandemic revealed the tragic consequences of failing to recognise health inequalities among different ethnic groups. Many experts in public health now accept that we were too slow to recognise that some ethnic groups were dying at a far higher rate than others. The Office for National Statistics belatedly started analysing covid-related deaths data by religious group—a short-term exercise that has since been discontinued—and found that Sikhs died disproportionately from covid, even after adjusting for other factors. Not only that; it showed that Sikhs were affected at a different rate from other predominantly south Asian groups, demonstrating the inadequacy of the existing ethnic categories.