A senior NHS diversity leader has claimed that ethnic minority healthcare workers feel they are having to work more on Covid-19 wards than their white colleagues.

Carol Cooper, head of equality, diversity and human rights at Birmingham Community Hospital, said BAME (Black Asian and Ethnic Minority) medics ‘feel targeted’ to work on the wards and are ‘terrified’.

Her comments come as the government launched a formal review into why a disproportionate number of coronavirus deaths have been among people from ethnic minorities. 

The investigation will be led by the NHS and Public Health England, after Labour said the number of BAME healthcare workers who had died was ‘deeply disturbing’. The first 10 medics to die after testing positive for Covid-19 were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

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Ms Cooper told the Nursing Times: ‘BAME staff feel that they are being put on Covid wards and exposed to patients with Covid over and above their colleagues.

‘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’.

She said that people from BAME backgrounds are at ‘greater risk’ of suffering more severe Covid-19 complications because they are more likely to have a ‘number of comorbidities’, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sickle cell, thalassaemia and lupus. 

Ms Cooper added that she knew BAME people would be overrepresented in the mortality rates due to a high number being frontline workers and ‘because of the amount of people that are caught in the poverty trap and live in households that have higher occupancy.’

She said: ‘There is all sorts of multiple deprivations that people are subject to now and I think Covid is throwing a light on the cracks in society and I think we’re going to have to rethink how we exist as a society, how we care for one another, how we care for the most vulnerable people in our society.’

The Runnymede Trust, an independent race equality think-tank, has previously warned of the disastrous ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic among BAME groups.

It suggested the reasons behind the high numbers of deaths and infection rates was very likely to be a combination of health, social, and economic imbalances in society.

The British Medical Association also said the government must investigate if and why BAME people are more vulnerable to the virus.

Dr David Bailey, from The British Medical Association, said the difference was ‘stark’ while calling for the review.

He said: ‘We absolutely need to know that because we need to be able to advise our members whether or not they need to treat themselves differently in terms of their risk profiles.’

Ms Cooper’s comments come after many said ethnic minority healthcare workers were ‘being whitewashed’ out of NHS celebrations.

Following the weekly nationwide #ClapForCarers, a number of doctors and campaigners said online that they noticed BAME staff were absent from the majority of mainstream media coverage. 

Medical consultant, Dr Asif Munaf, previously told Metro.co.uk it made him and other workers feel ‘underappreciated’ and that the contributions of ethnic minorities were being ‘downplayed’. 

Metro.co.uk has contacted the NHS, Public Health England and the Department for Health and Social Care for comment.

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