BLACK and ethnic minority Londoners should be made a priority for the roll-out of covid vaccines, according to Sadiq Khan.
The Mayor said BAME communities had been shown to be at higher risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from coronavirus and deserved preferential treatment when the distribution of the jabs begins.
The UK government has bought supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that have been shown by phase 3 trials to be highly effective, and there are hopes that the Oxford University/AstraZeneca jab will also work.
Guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation says the vaccine should be distributed according to age, with care home residents and workers first on the list.
But Mr Khan revealed o Tuesday he had asked for ethnicity to be included as a factor.
He told BBC London radio last night: “The NHS and Public Health England are working up criteria for who gets the vaccine first. Basically speaking, it’s done by age.
“But I have asked for additional things to be factored in, and that includes concerns I have got around black, Asian, ethnic minority Londoners who disproportionately suffered during the deaths we saw in March, April, May and June.”
According to PHE data, black women were more than twice as likely as white women to contract covid – with black men almost three times as likely as white men.
Death rates from covid were higher for Black and Asian ethnic groups when compared to white ethnic groups.
In London’s Turkish Speaking community over 130 known members have died after contracting coronavirus, with two of them falling victim to the virus within the past month.