A recurring and frustrating theme of this review has been the lack of reporting of ethnicity data, not just in relation to Covid-19 but more widely. The Government has taken some steps to improve data collection and reporting, with the creation of the ‘Ethnicity facts and figures’ service, but there is much more to be done.

We know there has been a failure to collect and publish basic data by ethnicity, such as the number of health and care staff who have caught Covid-19 or whether they received treatment after a positive test. We heard from Dr Chaand Nagpaul, from the British Medical Association, who said:

‘’Data is crucial. Unless we have the data we won’t know what to do. Even within Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities there are different outcomes. Data needs to tell us: ethnicity, religion, job occupation, profile of that job, whether there was exposure, other medical conditions, info on if they had the right PPE – in order to make sense of this in real time, to understand what is going on.’’

Additionally, the Muslim Council of Britain highlighted the importance of “disaggregated data on Covid-19 mortality rates continu[ing] to be collected to better understand whether there are particular factors that put individuals at higher risk”, and recommended that disaggregated data should be collected as standard practice, including data on faith. As well as disaggregated data we heard that multivariate analysis is important because it allows us to more clearly see inequalities.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma stated that failure to include Gypsy, Roma and Traveller ethnicity categories in the NHS Data Dictionary meant that there was insufficient data available to carry out an analysis on the impact of coronavirus on members of these groups as part of the PHE review of disparities in risks and outcomes.