Diane Abbott the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington has called on people to demand a public inquiry the coronavirus crisis’s disproportionate impact on black and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.
According to the Office for National Statistics black people are twice as likely as white people to die from Covid-19 after accounting for age, health, socioeconomic status and other factors
Ms Abbott, on May 18th tabled a parliamentary early day motion calling for a public inquiry, attributed the crisis to “government incompetence”.
She said: “This is a tremendous death toll. It has revealed the structural inequalities and the racial inequalities, so we have to support each other. We have to support school communities and we have to realise that there is a campaign we’re going to have to fight.”
She continued: “So it’s sectoral labour distribution, it’s job insecurity and a lot of these workers are on zero hours contracts. They are agency workers and often didn’t feel confident to query their lack of proper protective equipment.”
On May 4 the government announced a review to analyse how different factors – including ethnicity, gender and obesity – can impact on people’s health outcomes from Covid-19.
Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock said: “Every death from this virus is a tragedy and behind each statistic is a name, a loss and a family that will never be the same again.
“As part of our continued effort to understand even more about COVID-19, we have commissioned work from PHE to consider the impact of various factors such as ethnicity, obesity, age, gender and geographical location and how these may have an impact on someone’s susceptibility to the virus.
“The more we know about this virus and its impact, the more we will be able protect lives and limit the spread.”
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Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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