Covid-19: Black people over 80 in England are half as likely as white people to have been vaccinated

Targeted activity might be needed to tackle the disparities in accessing covid-19 vaccines, authors of a large study have said after finding that ethnic minorities, people living in areas of high deprivation, and those with severe mental health illness or learning disabilities seem to be less likely to have been vaccinated.1 Between 8 December 2020 and 13 January of this year, 41% of people aged 80 and over in England who do not live in care homes were vaccinated against covid-19. But the researchers from the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found a sizeable divergence in vaccination by ethnicity within this group of 476 375 people (of 1 160 062 over 80s). While 42.5% of white people were …