By: Aswathy Nair
CORONAVIRUS patients from Asian backgrounds are at least 30 years than white British people being hospitalised, an analysis in Oldham has shown.
A research team of doctors at the Royal Oldham hospital in the Greater Manchester town that recorded on of highest infection rates in England also noted that 319 of the 470 patients it recently studied lived in “the most deprived neighbourhoods”.
While about 12.5 per cent of the patients were marked as Asian or black African, Caribbean or “other black background”, the doctors noted a major variance in the average age of patients.
“Ethnicity was strongly attenuated in the logistic regression model by age, with the median age of white British patients 20 and 31 years greater than those of Black and Asian patients respectively,” said the report that was yet to be peer-reviewed.
The findings were revealed as people in Oldham were told on Tuesday (28) to avoid social visits till August 14, following a five-fold surge in Covid-19 cases.
Similar to nearby Blackburn with Darwen, majority of the new cases in Oldham were “mostly younger residents of south Asian heritage and in households with multigenerational families”, said a news report.
Katrina Stephens, the public health director for Oldham council, said majority of the 119 new cases involved people aged 20 to 40.
Many of them lived in “areas of high deprivation” and were likely to be engaged in “at-risk occupations”, such as warehouse jobs, taxi drivers, factory workers, and health and social care staff, she added.
Latest NHS data showed Oldham had the second highest infection rate in England at 54.3 cases per 100,000 people, following and Blackburn with Darwen (85.9 cases).
Oldham was the latest, after Blackburn with Darwen and Rochdale in the region, to initiate tough precautionary measures to prevent a local lockdown like in the case of Leicester.
Social gatherings with more than six people “should only take place if everyone is exclusively from two households or support bubbles”, said an official guidance.
Furthermore, Muslims in the region were advised to avoid open-air events and celebrate Eid al-Adha at home.
Arooj Shah, deputy leader of Oldham Council, said: “We’re urging residents to take the risk of coronavirus seriously and to stick to the guidelines.
“We know people across Oldham desperately want to see their friends and family, and get back to normal.
“But these restrictions are essential if we are to stop the spread of coronavirus and prevent a strict local lockdown being put in place, as we have seen elsewhere in the country.”
