One of the first doctors to warn of COVID’s disproportionate effect on ethnic minorities has been named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Dr Daniel Pan in Leicester, UK, was part of a group to treat the first cases in the city and noticed some of the sickest patients were minority ethnic.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 list celebrates young innovators in their respective fields, such as science and healthcare.
Dr Pan, who is a clinical fellow at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) at the University of Leicester, said: “It’s a great honour and I think the best thing about it is it helps advertise the research we’ve been doing, because it’s important work.”
He was one of the first to treat COVID patients in Leicester, and noticed the differences among the patients.
Dr Pan said: “Leicester has a very multi-ethnic diverse population so when the pandemic first hit the UK, I was working on the clinical wards.
“It became immediately clear to myself and my colleagues that a lot of these patients were from ethnic minority backgrounds – especially the ones who were very sick.
“We probably noticed that slightly earlier than a lot of other places, for example Italy, and we felt a need to get that out there.”
As part of a group of researchers led by Dr Manish Pareek, he contributed to work that demonstrated that COVID’s disproportionate impact on UK ethnic minority groups was largely a result of a greater risk of being infected, due to societal and health inequalities.
NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre director Professor Melanie Davies remarked that Dr Pan had made a “significant contribution to research efforts”, adding he had “a bright future in clinical research ahead of him”.
He is now working alongside his colleagues on a face mask that could determine whether the wearer has COVID, and possibly how infectious they are.
Dr Pan said: “We can probably find out when a person is most infectious, because we can find the time of day and the period of their illness where they breathe out the most virus.
“If it’s effective it can be rolled out, for example, everyone in A&E could wear a mask while they’re waiting to see a doctor and those who are mask positive can then go into isolation bays.”
Source: BBC News
