Coronavirus Vaccine Thousands of vulnerable people left unshielded against COVID-19 in UK
London/Sputnik: Around 375,000 vulnerable people could not be told to shield themselves for 12 weeks and not go out for shopping, travel or leisure at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic because the shielded patient list was outdated and lacked sufficient details of people´s medical conditions, the National Audit Office said in a report released on Wednesday.
On March 22 last year the UK government imposed the first COVID-19 lockdown and urged clinically extremely vulnerable people not to leave their homes under any circumstances, setting up a program to support them with food, medicines and basic care.
Initially, 1.3 million were identified as formally eligible for the program, but two months later, a further 900,000 people were added, totalling 2.2 million.
“This was as a result of GPs and trusts adding or removing people from the list based on their clinical judgement and local patient records,” the report said.
According to the NAO report, the fact that around 375,000 could not be contacted due to missing data and a further 440,000 refused to sign up for the shielding program led to only 510,486 asking and receiving at least one box of food.
“The shielding programme was an important response to support clinically extremely vulnerable people asked to shield. It provided support to many of those most at risk from COVID-19, and delivered food to just over 500,000 people. However, challenges pulling together data meant it took time to quickly identify those needing to shield, and therefore eligible for support,” NAO director Gareth Davies was quoted as saying.
The official said, however, that the government has learnt lessons from this programme and is better placed should this type of support be required again.
The report also claimed that despite its positive impact on protecting the extremely vulnerable people, it is unknown whether the program led to fewer deaths and less serious illness among those that were told to shield themselves.
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