'Third stage' of Covid-19 pandemic to hit South Asian communities, says Blackburn’s public health director

South Asian communities face the biggest risk from coronavirus, a government-backed study has shown, as Blackburn’s public health director warns of a “third stage” in the pandemic.

A wide-scale testing exercise conducted by Imperial College London in May found prevalence among people from an Asian background was 0.24 per cent, compared to 0.13 per cent among white people and 0.17 among the black community.

The researchers say the study’s Asian participants are “predominantly” of South Asian heritage. The results were published alongside warnings of a “rising tide” of infections among densely populated terraced houses in North West England, which has large South Asian communities.

Dominic Harrison, director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen Council the borough had recorded 114 new cases in the past fortnight, 97 of those patients form the South Asian population.

It comes after he wrote in the Lancashire Telegraph describing the outbreaks as a new phase in the crisis.

Phase one involved “older, wealthier, ethnically “white British” people who were infected abroad and returned to the Uk from holidays in Italy, France and Spain”, he wrote.

“In the second phase during March and April, most were infected both by wider community spread and within hospitals and care home settings.”

Although newlily confirmed cases are down to fewer than 10 a day in most of the Pennine Lancashire local authorities, said Mr Harrison.

“In this third phase of the pandemic, we can see a higher percentage of those newly-diagnoses over the past two weeks are from South Asian heritage communities.

“There is a clustering of cases in larger multi-generational households in areas characterised by smaller smaller terraced housing.”

He added: “In some ways it looks like this pattern of spread has returned to the start - smaller numbers with an index case infected their whole family though household transmission.”

On Sunday a leaked government document highlighted swathe of northern towns such as Kirklees, Bradford and Blackburn, where higher than average infection rates has marked them down as being either of “concern” or needing “enhanced” support, following the imposition of the first local lockdown in Leicester.

Local officials have only been granted access to postcode-level data by central government in recent weeks, allowing them to build a granular picture of local outbreaks.

However, there have been reports that councils are reluctant to publish the localised figures for fear of damaging community cohesion.

Matt Hancock has raised the issue at cabinet meetings, according to HuffPost UK. Last night the director of public health for Lancashire, Dr Sakthi Karunanithi encouraged residents to wear masks in indoor public places, appealing for help to keep the area out of lockdown.

Blackburn with Darwen has 11.7 per cent of households with five or more occupants, Pendle 8.8 per cent, Hyndburn 7.3per cent - the northwest regional average is 6.4 per cent, according to Mr Harrison.

"We have what we call a rising tide event rather than an outbreak," the told the BBC. "We have a number of cases rising in specific areas across a significant community but not a single big outbreak like Kirklees or other areas that had a workplace outbreak.

"What we're seeing from looking at postcode data is a single case being infected then going back to a household and all of that household getting infected ."

The ICL national study showed the rate of infection throughout the country was halving every eight to nine days during May.

However, other data sources indicate that the rate of reduction in the outbreak slowed in June, as lockdown began to be eased. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the study is crucial to the country's ongoing battle with coronavirus.

"This ambitious testing programme will help us better understand the spread of the virus to date, predict how it may spread in the future and inform our response to the pandemic," he said.

"It shows the impact our national lockdown efforts have had and demonstrates that we have taken the right actions at the right time.