UK struggled to contain Covid pandemic due to rife inequalities, report suggests

Exclusive: ‘Inequality wedge’ across nations reveals failures in containing infections, academics say. By Nadine White

Socio-economic policies aimed at lowering inequality ‘could help diminish the impact of future pandemics’. (PA)

Systemic inequalities within countries such as the UK correlates with higher Covid-19 infections rates in those nations, new research shows.

The analysis by New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC), entitled Inequality, Lockdown, and Covid-19, also raises concerns that socioeconomic differences could hamper vaccination efforts.

The academic study, published on Wednesday, seeks to understand if pre-existing systemic inequities could be linked to higher coronavirus infection rates and examined transmission rates in 70 countries between March 2020 to August 2020, or what is widely seen as the first 21 weeks of the pandemic.