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23 January 2021 | New Scientist | 23

T

HE race to vaccinate as
many people as possible
against covid-19 is under
way, but unless we track who
receives the vaccine we won’t be
able to ensure the benefits are
spread equitably. Publishing
ethnicity and other demographic
data must become a priority.
Detangling data to reveal
patterns in subgroups of a
population is a powerful tool to
address inequality. After all, you
can’t fix a problem if you don’t
know it is there. Globally, breaking
down covid-19 cases based on
factors such as age and sex has
been enormously helpful for
our understanding of the disease.
Knowing that the risk of severe
illness rises with age, for instance,
has helped inform interventions.
Countries in which information
on race and ethnicity for cases
was published early on during the
pandemic, including the US, the
UK and Norway, were among the
first to reveal worrying trends
of people from racial and ethnic
minority groups being at higher
risk from covid-19. Similar
patterns have since been seen in
other nations that have looked for
them, such as Australia and Brazil.
Collecting and publicising
this kind of data can help drive
governments to take action.
Data published in the UK in April,
which revealed that people from
Black, Asian and minority ethnic
(BAME) backgrounds were over-
represented among critically ill
covid-19 patients, prompted the
MIUK government to launch an
CH
EL
LE
D’U

RB
AN

O

Comment

Layal Liverpool is a trainee

digital reporter at New Scientist

@layallivs

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inquiry into the issue and led

Public Health England to start

recording covid-19 cases and

deaths by ethnicity. In June,

the UK government announced

£4.3 million in funding for new

research aiming to “explain and

mitigate” the disparity.

Many other European countries

have traditionally shied away

from race or ethnicity data, due to

concerns over discrimination and

privacy. But in September last year,

the European Union committed

to investigating the obstacles

to collecting such data across

member states by the end of 2021.

As countries around the

world are rolling out covid-19

vaccination programmes, and

given our knowledge about the

disproportionate impact the

pandemic is having on certain

subgroups, we must double down

on efforts to collect ethnicity and

other demographic data on covid-

19 vaccinations, such as age, sex

and socioeconomic status.

Surveys in the US and UK last

year suggested that hesitancy

about covid-19 vaccines may be

more prevalent among racial and

ethnic minority groups, raising

concerns that this might result in

lower vaccine uptake among those

most at risk from the disease.

Similar trends have been seen

with other vaccinations. A 2017

study in England found uptake

of the shingles vaccine was lower

among people of Black or mixed

ethnicity compared with white

people, and last year there were

concerns about lower uptake of the

flu vaccine among BAME groups in

some parts of the country. Uptake

of the flu vaccine has additionally

been found to be lower in more

deprived areas of the UK, which

have also seen disproportionate

numbers of deaths from covid-19.

To find out whether concerns

about vaccine hesitancy are

founded, and to ensure equal

access to covid-19 vaccines across

communities, it is crucial that

governments gather and release

data on who is being vaccinated

in real-time. Currently, no country

in the UK has released this data

and when I asked the bodies

responsible, only the one for Wales

confirmed it was collecting it.

The US Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention says it is

collecting information on the race

and ethnicity of people who get

vaccinated across the US, but is

yet to publish it.

Figures released by Mississippi,

North Carolina and Maryland

suggest a disproportionate

number of vaccines have gone to

white people relative to their share

of the population in those states.

We must get more transparency

around who is being inoculated. ❚

For another example of missing

ethnicity data, this time in genetics

research, turn to page 44

Vaccine transparency

We must star t publishing ethnicity data for covid-19 vaccinations

to make sure no group is treated unfairly, says Layal Liverpool