Measuring the exposure of Black, Asian and other ethnic groups to COVID-infected neighbourhoods in English towns and cities

Drawing on the work of The Doreen Lawrence Review—a report on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in the UK—this paper develops an index of exposure, measuring which ethnic groups have been most exposed to COVID-19 infected residential neighbourhoods during the first and second waves of the pandemic in England. The index is based on a Bayesian Poisson model with a random intercept in the linear predictor, allowing for extra-Poisson variation at neighbourhood and town/city scales. This permits within-city differences to be decoupled from broader regional trends in the disease. The research finds that members of ethnic minority groups can be living in areas with higher infection rates but also that the risk of exposure is distributed unevenly across these groups. Initially, in the first wave, the disease disproportionately affected Black residents but, as the pandemic has progressed, especially the Pakistani but also the Bangladeshi and Indian groups have had the highest exposure. This higher exposure of the Pakistani group is not straightforwardly a function of neighbourhood deprivation because it is present across a range of average house prices. We find evidence to support the view, expressed in The Doreen Lawrence Review, that it is linked to occupational and environmental exposure, particularly residential density but, having allowed for these factors, differences between the towns and cities remain.