Coronavirus: Care-worker death rate twice that of health workers

People 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 figures show.

But healthcare workers have been no more likely to die than other workers.

Nearly two-thirds of the 2,494 20- to 64-year-olds whose deaths were linked to Covid-19 were men.

And 63 were male security guards, making them almost twice as likely to die as even men working in social care.

The ONS analysis, up to 20 April, factored in age but did not take account of people’s ethnicity, location, wealth or underlying health conditions.

As a result, it cannot prove the deaths were caused by the jobs people do or by other factors.

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.

However, despite their close proximity to patients, healthcare workers, including doctors and nurses, had much lower death rates. This may be because they had better access to personal protective equipment (PPE) than other workers.

• Remembering 100 NHS workers who have died

The overall death rate for men aged 20-64 in England and Wales linked to Covid-19 was 9.9 deaths per 100,000, compared with 5.2 for women.

For male security guards, it was 45.7.