Ethnicity and COVID-19 infection: are the pieces of the puzzle falling into place?

摘要

The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing problems withinour societies, and as always, vulnerable groups are hithardest. One key story around COVID-19, particularlyin the UK and USA, has been inequality in COVID-19outcomes between people from different ethnic backgrounds.Reports of such differences initially emergedfrom certain states in the USA, where rates of hospitalisationand death from COVID-19 were higher in Blackpeople than would be expected from the ethnic compositionof the population [1]. Similar findings are shown inthe UK, where Black and South Asian people have disproportionatelyhigh rates in intensive care [2], mortalityamongst healthcare workers [3] and the general population[4], and the development of paediatric inflammatorymultisystem syndrome (a paediatric hyperinflammatorystate related to COVID-19) [5]. The question is, why?.