Senior Government Advisor says coronavirus is 'discriminatory'

• Video report by ITV News Security Editor Rohit Kachroo

• Words by ITV News Trainee Fred Dimbleby

A senior government advisor has told ITV News that coronavirus is "discriminatory" after newly released figures showed that certain ethnicities were at greater risk of Covid-19 related deaths.

Calum Semple, a professor of Outbreak Medicine, said he thought the disparity was caused by "factors such as social deprivation and overcrowding and years of...difficulties in their lives, where they’ve had reduced access to healthcare services and poorer access to education and schooling that is driving some of these differences."

"It’s a discriminatory disease, it discriminates against people that have had a difficult life because they’ve had fewer choices in their life.

"It discriminates against people who have fewer chances to take exercise and good employment and good diets."

• Calum Semple, a professor of Outbreak Medicine:

He added: "It is possible that rare genetic features might be more prevalent in some of the ethnic groups and we are seeing that with influenza so that could well be driving some of these differences but so far the evidence suggests that it is the socio-economic".

It comes as new figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the risk of dying from coronavirus was significantly higher among some ethnic groups than those of a white ethnicity.

Black people were shown to be more than four times more likely of dying from Covid-19 than white people, with black females 4.3 times more likely to die than white females and black males 4.2 times more likely to die than white males from a coronavirus related death.

When people’s age and socio-demographic background was accounted for, black people were almost twice as likely to die from a Covid-19 related death than white people in England and Wales.

The data also showed that, once pre-existing factors had been accounted for, Bangladeshi and Pakistani males were 1.8 times more likely to have died from the virus than white males with the same figure being 1.6 among females.

The data was collected from people who died in England and Wales between March 2nd and April 10th.

The ONS admits that further analysis is needed to explain the remaining difference between the risk of death among different ethnicities.

It does suggest that certain social characteristics or health outcomes, such as people’s jobs, associated with different ethnicities may not be included in their model.

But behind these numbers, these statistics, are people and families who are morning.

Lives lived, and lives lost. These are some of their stories.

• Dr Louisa Rajakumari

Dr Rajakumari was a much loved and respected English teacher at Kingsford Community School in Newham, East London.

When she came to the UK to teach English, she was shocked by the bad discipline in schools.

Her husband, Dr Gladius Kulothungan, said: “Her first day of school was one of shock because she had worked in India and then in Singapore where discipline is the first fundamental thing that everyone has to follow but she saw no discipline because being in a London school, she saw all the rude behaviour.”

But Dr Rajakumari was dedicated to her pupils. Her husband said: “She really cared for young teenagers and she really felt that if they could be pushed further they could become better human beings.”

Their marriage spanned decades but they first met when they were children growing up in Southern India.

“I used to see her when I was riding my rickety bicycle and she would be standing on the other side of the road with a ponytail and pinafore school uniform, and one day she threw a very wild smile at me and I was hooked on from that day.

“So, I started growing roses in my back garden and every day I would give her a rose and then I promoted myself to becoming a poet and giving her poetry and so on and that’s how we met each other.”

After she passed, Dr Kulothungan told their daughter “we’re not going to mourn her death, we are going to celebrate her life”.

Her funeral took place at East London Cemetery – the family performed ‘three cheers’ for her.

• Olume and Isi Ivowi

“I’ve gone from having three siblings to having one in the space of ten days.”

Those are the words of Ida Ivowi who lives in New York and is separated from her family, who are based in Luton and Milton Keynes.

She had three brothers, and in just over a week she lost two of them to the virus.

Olume Ivowi was 46 and died on the 10th April. Ida’s reaction was “shock, that was a complete knock me back, blow me on the ground type shock”.

But, as the oldest sibling, her thoughts turned to protecting her family especially her other brother Isi.

Isi had Down’s syndrome and was very close to Olume so she had to work out how to tell him about his brother’s death sensitively.

She said: “We spoke to Isi’s carers and it was agreed that it would be best that somebody could be with him when he was being told rather than him just being told over the phone.”

But only days later Isi was also taken into hospital, suffering from the same virus that had killed his brother. He died on the 19th of April.

Her third brother Osi also contracted the Virus but survived and is now recovering.

She can’t be sure but thinks that “it is more likely than not that they did catch it from each other.”

Ida can’t return home for the funeral, separated by thousands of miles from her family who have lost so much from this virus. She will watch their funeral over a video stream and says “I couldn’t be there physically for my sister-in-law. I couldn’t be there for my brother.”

But she says she is a positive person, “so I have had to look for ways to turn that around and not dwell on just the negative but…try and be as supportive and helpful to everybody as I can be.”

• Dr Furqan Ali Siddiqui

Dr Furqan Ali Siddiqui knew the dangers of coronavirus.

“He was very well aware of all of the situation”, his daughter said.

“I remember him frequently sending me and my mum different videos of different people who had contracted the virus themselves and different articles and things on Whatsapp.

“He would make sure that we were well aware, and we were taking good care of ourselves.”

Dr Siddiqui was a Clinical Fellow in the Burns and Plastics Department at Wythenshawe Hospital.

He had been working with the team since October 2019. He died on the 30th April.

One of his six children, Hanan, talked to ITV News from Pakistan where she lives.

She said she had “lost something that can never be replaced.”

“He was so much to me.

“He was not only a father, he was a teacher to me, he guided me, he was a great source of motivation.

“He taught us so many new things, he guided us through so much.

“It’s devastating for all of us.”

But his work inspired Hanan.

“I’ve seen him treat so many patients and so many happy people around him, who used to be like ‘you’ve been such a great help and we are so grateful for you’.

“He’s always been that person that I look up to, and I still do in terms of profession and an inspiration in general.”

She now plans to follow him into a career in medicine.

She said: “I think that ever since I was a kid, he always used to tell me how important being a doctor is to so many people and how he had always dreamed of helping hundreds of thousands of lives with whatever knowledge he had."

But they are also a family that is mourning a loved one from thousands of miles away. She said: “It’s very sad, we hoped that we would be able to see him one last time and be with him at that time.

“It’s really hard for us, we’ve been miserable this entire time and we still are grieving.