Intisar Chowdhury, 18, says the much-awaited report that looked at whether people from BAME backgrounds were being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, failed to set out any recommendations on how to save BAME lives or any solutions.

The terms of reference for the report stated that it would look at “recommendations for action”, however they were not included in the report.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said equalities minister Kemi Badenoch was working on a response which he hopes will “get to the bottom” of why BAME people are at higher risk and to “find ways of closing that gap”.

Intisar’s father, Dr. Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, 53, who was from a Bangladeshi background, died from COVID-19 in hospital after a 15-day battle against the virus.

The “Disparities in the Risk and Outcomes of COVID-19” report said people of Bangladeshi ethnicity “had around twice the risk of death than people of White British ethnicity.”

“People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50 percent higher risk of death when compared to White British,” the report stated.

Before his death, he had written a message addressed to Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Facebook, begging him to ensure “each and every health worker” had access to personal protective equipment (PPE).

In the post five days before he died, Dr Chowdhury wrote: “Remember we may be doctor/nurse/HCA/allied health workers who are in direct contact with patients, but we are also human being to practice human right like others to live in this world disease-free with our family and children.”

After his father’s death, Intisar appeared on the radio station LBC to ask Hancock about what was being done, with the health secretary saying that he was “really sorry” about his father’s death.

“We took very, very seriously what your father said and we’ve been working around the clock to ensure that there’s enough protective equipment,” he said.

Speaking after the publication of the report, Intisar told Newsweek: “Everything I’ve read from the report is literally a confirmation of what we already knew and what we’ve already seen.

“It doesn’t really give us any clarity or any answers.”

He also said he found it concerning that the words race and racism are barely used in the report at all.

He said: “Avoiding the problem, avoiding any statement of the problem, is not the right solution, especially with everything that’s going on in America, you’d think that the U.K. would see transparency as the best option to ensure there is that relationship between the people and government to dispel any ideas that racism is prevalent.”

Intisar said there was “no affirmative statement of anything going wrong”, which he condemned.

He said: “I was reading some of the statements in the report.

“One of the statements said that a reason for the deaths among BAME people being disproportionately higher is due to cultural and language barriers between them and the healthcare services. That brings into question, if the U.K. is as multicultural and as racially diverse as the U.K. claims itself to be, then why are there not systems in place, procedures in place to support people that speak English as a second language in accessing the healthcare they need sufficiently and as quickly as White British people can?

“There’s a big problem there that hasn’t been addressed. As a result, diagnoses haven’t been made quickly enough, treatment hasn’t been carried out quickly enough and therefore as a result the BAME deaths are a lot higher.”

Intisar said he didn’t think the report “goes far enough or provide him with any new information”.

Since his father’s passing, Intisar says for his mother and 11-year-old sister, life has been difficult under lockdown, especially since they have not been able to meet friends and family since his father’s death.

Intisar called on the government to implement systems and procedures to help people from BAME backgrounds, particularly those who cannot speak English fluently and to ensure they can still access healthcare services as efficiently and as quickly as white British people can.

He said: “I was reading about how the BME mortality rate was a lot lower last year than it was this year, as in it was lower than the white British mortality rate, that causes me to think that is it higher now because there’s an influx of casualties and, as a result, there’s this unconscious priority of people from a non-BAME background. I don’t think it’s impossible there is some racial prioritization taking place within the health care setting.

Intisar said celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid last week was very hard without his father who he described as a very healthy man and who exercised regularly, adding he could not find a “single flaw” in the way his father lived his life.

Hitting back at critics who claim people from BAME backgrounds are playing the “victim card” or who question why some BAME groups are not as disproportionately impacted as others, Intisar said he found their accusations “extremely disrespectful to all of the deaths that have taken place in the BAME community.”

He also said he didn’t understand why people made sweeping generalizations about people from Bangladeshi or south Asian households living in overcrowded housing, saying his own friends and family did not live in an overcrowded house, but that some people were using the idea to “fault” people from south Asian backgrounds catching the virus.

Intisar called on the government to provide solutions to resolve the problems facing BAME communities.

“In their own report they stated that the high mortality rate of BAME people from COVID-19 could be due to the economic situation they find themselves in or due to the deprived areas they live in,” he said.

“If they acknowledge that, why are they not addressing it? They’ve just stated the problem without actually wanting to address it.”

The Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England have been contacted for comment.