“Emerging evidence” shows too many UK Cypriots have died from coronavirus
According to the latest unconfirmed reports, more than 200 UK Cypriots have already died from coronavirus. Parikiaki newspaper, according to a report on its website www.parikiaki.com dated 12/04/20, expects to have “confirmed figures” by Wednesday (15/04/20).
According to the same report, Parikiaki journalist Michael Yiakoumi has observed that there is grave concern among the UK Cypriot community, based on “emerging evidence”, that “coronavirus is having a disproportionate impact on UK Cypriots”.
Parikiaki also observes that “we make up 3 percent of the population of London if we are 300k out of 9M but we account for almost 7 percent of all Covid related deaths in London” while “in Cyprus where there is a population of a million there have only been 15 deaths”.
Regarding potential risks due to the Greek Orthodox Easter season, Parikiaki issues the following warning: “The other fear we have is that it is Greek Easter next week and traditionally we have family gatherings. Please respect yourselves and others and government law that these gatherings should be limited to those who live within the household. Otherwise we can see an acceleration of coronavirus deaths and maybe result in double the figures we have now”.
On 08/04/2020), Parikiaki (parikiaki.com) had reported that 151 UK Cypriots (95 GC’s, 55 TC’s and one Maronite), all from London, died from Covid-19 out of approximately 300 that were tested positive while “several” were still in hospital.
Parikiaki also made reference to “two UK Greek Cypriots from Birmingham, one UK Greek Cypriot from Derby and one UK Greek Cypriot from Lowestoft” but it was not clear whether these were included in the dead or merely those that tested positive.
According to Parikiaki the above figures were reached “after contacting local hospitals, Churches and Turkish Cypriot media and community, funeral directors” and taking into account death announcements that had reached the newspaper.
In the meantime, the above numbers go on increasing every day but, at least for the time being, we are not in a position to know the exact figures.
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The number of Cypriots in the UK losing their lives from COVID-19 is alarming. To put the figure of 150 reported above into perspective, a Cypriot here in the UK is at least 100-150 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than in the island (see discussion in social media by Nicos Trimikliniotis, Photios Kouzoupis and myself as to the statistics). Even compared to Italy, these figures represent on average four to five times higher casualties and the UK is not even yet at the peak of the pandemic crisis (assuming that the size of the community is about 110,000 people).
Note on Cyprus diaspora and its size:
Perhaps one of the most difficult to estimate figure is the size of the diaspora. In my humble view the 300,000 figure might be misleading.
UK statistics point to a figure of Cypriots in the UK of less than 100,000 while other sources often estimate the size of our community to 300,000. Charis Psaltis and the rest of our team have tried to work out another method to calculate and verify the numbers of Cypriots abroad by asking in Cypriot local surveys the numbers of siblings currently in the island and abroad (as well as where relatives are located). In our 2017 survey, the mean number of brothers or sisters of Greek Cypriot participants was 3.23 and the mean number of those who migrated was 0.70. In the case of TCs, the mean number of brothers or sisters participants had was 3.43 and the mean number of those who migrated is 0.85. Based on these ratios recognizing of course all limitations in our assumptions, there are at least 180 thousand GCs and 52 thousand TCs in all countries abroad combined (assuming in Cyprus we have about 660 thousand GCs and 180 TCs based on available censuses). For Greek Cypriots the ratio of those in the UK are 44% (percentage of the whole diaspora) and for the Turkish Cypriots 54%. This means the projected numbers could be around 79 thousand for Greek Cypriots and 29 thousand for Turkish Cypriots currently in the UK. If these calculations and the rather close figures suggested above are accurate, the numbers of those dying from COVID-19 are severely more alarming than most people might have thought so far.
Cypriots in London have been affected disproportionately and this might require some more specific explanations that apply to them e.g. Cypriots working in public facing occupations. Also the community is very socially active (all our events have been packed with people in usually crowded London spaces). To this point, Northern Italy has been described in the literature as one of the best examples of a socially active community (Putnam) but this translates to more casualties during pandemics. There might be multiple reasons for these figures related to patterns of employment, residency and socialisation but for now explanations seem less important than the alarming figures themselves.
And given that Easter is ahead of us the take home lesson is that our community has been 5 times more severely hit than Spain or 100-150 times more than Cyprus itself. Everyone should be cautious and follow social distancing while protecting others. Celebrations come and go but not our beloved ones!