England's ethnic Covid-19 deaths disparity

Until this week the UK had published no information regarding the ethnicity of Covid-19 victims in the country. That has now changed, for England at least, with the NHS now publishing daily demographic breakdowns. As this infographic shows, we've taken a closer look at the figures and have compared the share of deaths accounted for by three ethnic groups to their share of the country's total population.

While the ethnic group 'Black' makes up 3.5 percent of England's population, as of 17 April it has been identified in 5.8 percent of Covid-19 deaths - 801 people in total. That means the share of deaths is 66 percent higher than the share of the population.

In contrast, the group 'White', which represents 85.3 percent of the population according to the latest census, has so far made up only 73.6 percent of deaths. In comparison to the Black percentage difference of +66 percent, here we have -14 percent.

Even if the 9.5 percent of deaths which currently have no ethnicity information were to be classified as 'White', the figure would still be under the group's population share by 2 percentage points, leaving some important questions to be answered as this crisis continues to claim lives around the country.