Coronavirus high risk list being updated after more vulnerable people identified

Coronavirus: the symptoms
Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, arrives at Downing Street on Tuesday
REUTERS

More people with medical conditions are being added to the Government’s coronavirus shielding programme, England’s chief medical officer has said.

Prof Chris Whitty said GPs have helped identify patients who were not initially included in the high-risk category but who do need special protection.

About 1.5 million people had been told they need to have the “absolute minimum” contact with others after being identified as among the most vulnerable.

But Prof Whitty confirmed on Tuesday that more people are now being added to the official high-risk list and that they would be sent letters this week.

The Government last month said people in high-risk categories should exercise shielding measures by staying at home at all times.

They were told to avoid any face-to-face contact for at least 12 weeks.

Prof Whitty said a first wave of letters informing people they needed to implement measures had been sent, with a second wave due to go out this week.

He said the "great majority" of people at high risk had been identified centrally through medical records.

But he told the daily Downing Street press conference: "There are additional people who have been identified either by specialist medical groups or, in some cases, by GPs, who know that someone has got a group of conditions or a particular condition that isn't on the list but makes them particularly vulnerable... so some people have been added to the list as a result of that."

Prof Whitty did not clarify what medical conditions meant these extra people qualified for the shielding programme.

This focus on clinically vulnerable people, including children, covers those with certain conditions such as severe asthma, specific cancers, solid organ transplant recipients and pregnant women with significant heart disease.

Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty and Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab attend a COVID-19 Digital Press Conference at 10 Downing Street
via REUTERS

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Prof Whitty explained that some being urged to observe the shielding measures would choose not to do so.

He said: "There have been some people who will have taken a decision in discussion with their GP, that they simply do not wish to be part of this, that the idea of being, for many weeks, completely cut off, at least physically from society, except for the absolute basic necessities... that this is not something they wish to do."

He added: "And this particularly, for example, might apply to people who have had a terminal diagnosis and are in palliative care and are on the last stages, where they would just make a rational life decision, that was not what they wished to do."

Prof Whitty said changes to the shielding programme, in terms of people being added or not wishing to take part, was something that was always "expected to happen".

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said it would be publishing updated shielding guidance later this week.

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