Care-worker death rate twice that of health workers

New statistics have shown that those working in social care in England and Wales have been twice as likely to die with coronavirus as the general working-age population.

Office for National Statistics data also reveals that healthcare workers have been no more likely to die than other workers. However, the analysis cannot prove the deaths were caused by the jobs people do or by other factors as it does not take account of people's ethnicity, location, wealth or underlying health conditions.

Of the 2,494 deaths analysed, 131 were care workers - 86 female and 45 male. But because many more social care workers are female, this equates to a death rate of 23.4 per 100,000 for men and 9.6 per 100,000 for women.

Despite their close proximity to patients, healthcare workers, including doctors and nurses, had much lower death rates. Some health experts have said that this may be because they had better access to personal protective equipment (PPE) than other workers.

Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: “These shocking statistics are another tragic reminder about the essential need for our vital social care workers to be fully protected and equipped to look after themselves, as well as our most elderly and vulnerable. The government’s online PPE ordering system needs to be fully operational as soon as possible, so that councils and care providers can directly request that critical protective equipment gets to the frontline where it is desperately needed.”