COVID‐19 and ethnicity: Spotlight on the global rheumatology issues in developing and developed countries

<title xmlns="https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ns/archiving/1.2/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Abstract</title> <p xmlns="https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ns/archiving/1.2/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">A key issue in the response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic is the internationally recognised observation that COVID‐19 disproportionally affects the Black and Minority Ethnic Population (BAME) (1). We focus predominantly on the countries of the UK, USA, and India COVID‐19 rheumatology challenges and examples. This unprecedented public health crisis started in China in Dec 2019, following an infection caused by a novel coronavirus strain, named as SARS‐CoV2 (2). The World Health Organisation in March 2020 declared this public health emergency as a pandemic (2). COVID‐19 pandemic has moved from country to country peaking at different times despite implementation of strict preventive measures, including complete lock down periods with varied success. Case fatality and mortality rates have been highly variable across nations as well as different ethnic groups (3).</p>