A PROBE into how factors such as ethnicity and obesity can affect vulnerability to Covid-19 has been ordered by the Health Secretary.

Deaths among black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups are said to be disproportionately high.

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It comes as Britain's ethnic minorities are suffering a vastly higher proportion of coronavirus deaths, figures show.

Covid-19 has killed 33 white people per 100,000 in English hospitals but 89 per 100,000 of black Caribbean descent, says NHS England.

A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies also showed deaths of British black Africans are 3.5 times those of white Brits, and Brit Pakistani deaths are 2.7 times higher.

Trevor Phillips, ex-chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “They say viruses don’t discriminate.

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“But the faces of those who have died saving lives tell a very different story.

“We won’t know the truth about coronavirus until we treat this question with the same seriousness we treat the search for a vaccine.”

Heroic medics who have died on the front line are also disproportionately from an ethnic minority.

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