A major review has confirmed that black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people are more likely to die with Covid- 19.
It found that people of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death than people of white British ethnicity, while people of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, other Asian, Caribbean and black ethnicity had between 10% and 50% higher risk of death.
The Public Health England review was launched last month aimed at analysing how factors like ethnicity can impact people's health outcomes from Covid-19.
Data from the Office for National Statistics has shown black men and women are more than four times more likely to suffer a coronavirus-related death than white people.
Officials had earlier insisted the review's findings had not been delayed because of tensions caused by protests over the death in the US of George Floyd.
Publication had originally been promised by the end of May.
The report, titled 'disparities in the risk and outcomes of Covid-19', also looks at other risk factors, including age, sex and obesity.
England's health secretary Matt Hancock said age was the "biggest risk factor" and that being male was also a "significant risk factor" he added, with working age men twice as likely to die as working age women. Occupation was a risk factor.
He said: "This work underlines that being black or from a minority ethnic background is a major risk factor. This racial disparity holds even after accounting for the effect of age, deprivation, region and sex.
"The PHE ethnicity analysis did not adjust for factors such as comorbidities and obesity, so there is much more work to do to understand the key drivers of these disparities, the relationships between the different risk factors and what we can do to close the gap."
Shadow health and social care secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the findings outlined by Mr Hancock confirm Covid-19 "thrives on inequalities".
He told the Commons: "We've always known that there was a social gradient in health - the poorest and most deprived have inequality in access to health care and an inequality in health outcomes.
"What [Mr Hancock] has confirmed today is that Covid thrives on inequalities. Yes indeed, black lives matter but it is surely a call to action that black, Asian and minority ethnic people are more likely to die from Covid and more likely to be admitted to intensive care from Covid."
