When Norway’s public health experts began looking into the backgrounds of those infected by coronavirus, they made a startling discovery: people born in Somalia have infection rates more than 10 times above the national average.
The Scandinavian country has just over 7,500 Covid-19 cases, equivalent to 140 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to data released on Tuesday. But 453 of those cases have been among the relatively small community living in Norway who were born in Somalia, a rate of 1,586 per 100,000.
“You would hear of an uncle who had been hospitalised and that this family has been infected,” said Ayan Bashir Sheikh-Mohamed, a doctor of Somali origin living in Oslo who was among the first to alert the authorities to the worryingly high death rate. “It felt like there was a lot of people.”