School of Infection & Immunity

Research involving an Institute scientist has shown that Ethnic Minority patients who are hospitalised with COVID-19 are more likely to be admitted to critical care and receive mechanical ventilation than White patients.

This has been found to be the case despite them being younger, having fewer underlying conditions, and having similar duration of symptoms and disease severity at presentation than the White group.

The new preprint - preliminary research that has not yet been peer-reviewed - which can be found on The Lancet, also discovered that South Asians are at higher risk of in-hospital death, partly explained by higher rates of diabetes in this group.

Released from the ISARIC WHO Clinical Characterisation Protocol (CCP) UK prospective cohort study, it investigated ethnic inequalities in critical care admissions, need for mechanical ventilation, and in-hospital mortality in hospitalised patients.

ISARIC 4C, a UK-wide consortium of doctors and scientists committed to answering urgent questions about COVID-19, analysed 30,693 patients enrolled between 6 February and 8 May 2020 from 260 hospitals in England, Scotland, and Wales.

Of these, 83 per cent were White, 5 per cent South Asian, 4 per cent Black, 1 per cent East Asian, and 8 per cent of Other Ethnic Minority.

Ethnic Minorities were younger and more likely to have diabetes, but less likely to have other comorbidities, such as chronic heart and lung disease.

There was no difference in time from symptom onset to hospital admission, or severity of illness on admission.

South Asians, Black, and Other Ethnic Minorities were more likely to be admitted to critical care (high dependency or intensive care units) and receive mechanical ventilation, compared to the White group, after adjusting for age, sex and location.

South Asians had a 19 per cent higher mortality compare to the White group, which is partly explained by diabetes. Higher mortality was not observed in other Ethnic groups.

Three University of Glasgow scientists are listed as authors in the research: Dr Antonia Ho (Institute of Infection, Immunity & Inflammation), Professor Naveed Sattar (Institute of Cardiovascular & Medical Sciences), and Dr Vittal Katikireddi (Institute of Health and Wellbeing).

Dr Ho, Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Virus Research (CVR) said: “This important study highlights to policymakers that ethnicity needs to be considered alongside older age groups and other health conditions when deciding who should be prioritised for vaccine, when one becomes available.

"It also raises the question of whether certain ethnic groups, in particular South Asians, need more protection in frontline roles.”

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Ethnicity and outcomes from COVID-19: the ISARIC CCP-UK prospective
observational cohort study of hospitalised patients

• Harrison, Ewen M. and Docherty, Annemarie B. and Barr, Benjamin and Buchan, Iain and Carson, Gail and Drake, Tom M. and Dunning, Jake and Fairfield, Cameron J. and Gamble, Carrol and Green, Christopher A. and Griffiths, Chris and Halpin, Sophie and Hardwick, Hayley E. and Ho, Antonia and Holden, Karl A. and Hollinghurst, Joe and Horby, Peter W. and Jackson, Clare and Katikireddi, Srinivasa Vittal and Knight, Stephen and Lyons, Ronan and MacMahon, James and Mclean, Kenneth A. and Merson, Laura and Murphy, Derek and Nguyen-Van-Tam, Jonathan S. and Norman, Lisa and Olliaro, Piero L. and Pareek, Manish and Piroddi, Roberta and Pius, Riinu and Read, Jonathan M. and Russell, Clark D. and Sattar, Naveed and Shaw, Catherine A. and Sheikh, Aziz and Sinha, Ian P. and Swann, Olivia and Taylor-Robinson, David and Thomas, Daniel and Turtle, Lance and Openshaw, Peter JM and Baillie, J. Kenneth and Semple, Malcolm G. and Investigators, ISARIC4C, Ethnicity and Outcomes from COVID-19: The ISARIC CCP-UK Prospective Observational Cohort Study of Hospitalised Patients (5/31/2020). Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3618215

First published: 25 June 2020