On Tuesday 21st April, a senior NHS diversity leader claimed that ethnic minority healthcare workers are "feeling targetted" to work more on Covid-19 wards than their white counterparts. Carol Cooper, head of equality, diversity and human rights at Birmingham Community Hospital, said that "BAME (Black Asian and Ethnic Minority) staff feel that they are being put on Covid wards and exposed to patients with Covid over and above their colleagues." In her interview with Nursing Times, she said,
"Some are saying they are being taken from the wards that they usually work on and put on the Covid wards and they feel that there is a bias – the same bias that existed before they are feeling is now influencing their being appointed and they are terrified, everybody is terrified."
Her comments appear after the government announced that it will launch a formal investigation into why NHS workers from BAME background appear to be disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
This follows after 10 off 19 doctors who passed due to coronavirus were reportedly from the BAME backgrounds. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, "We have seen, both across the population as a whole but in those who work in the NHS, a much higher proportion who've died from minority backgrounds and that really worries me. I pay tribute to the work they've done, including those who were born here, moved here, and given that service to the NHS. It's a really important thing that we must try to fully understand."
Despite only accounting for 13% of the population in England and Wales, 44% of all NHS doctors and 24% of nurses are from a BAME background.
In the meantime, a spokesperson for the prime minister said the NHS and Public Heath England (PHE) would take the lead in the investigation.
