What a difference an algorithm makes: 1.7 million people have been added to the government’s shielding list in England, almost doubling the number overnight. A new risk analysis tool has for the first time factored in people’s socioeconomic conditions and underlying health problems, hugely expanding the number of people identified to be at high risk from the coronavirus.
To put that another way: millions of people who have been told throughout the pandemic that they were safe to go about their lives like the general public are now being advised to shield. Some of these people will have been voluntarily staying at home 24/7 already, but crucially they will have had to do so without the help that comes with being on the government’s official list, such as statutory sick pay, medicine deliveries and priority shopping. For others, the announcement will be a sudden and significant change to their lives – with no advance warning. Until now, 2.2 million people had been on the official shielding list, including those with lung disease and some who had received transplants.
Boris Johnson has been three steps behind throughout the pandemic, issuing lockdown mandates weeks after they were needed. But the delayed expansion of the shielding programme is staggering even by this government’s standards. It is now six weeks into England’s third national lockdown. It is almost a year since the first shielding list was introduced. This is governance at an unforgivably glacial pace.
It is understandable that as time went on the analysis would become more sophisticated, and it is a positive that more people are now eligible for support. But it is inexcusable that it didn’t happen sooner. Almost 2 million high-risk people have been left to fend for themselves during a pandemic, all because ministers failed to correctly identify and protect those at highest risk. It is not as if they weren’t aware of the issues. This month, the National Audit Office (NAO) found that, at the start of the Covid crisis, hundreds of thousands of clinically vulnerable people were left without state support due to a dearth of official data. Charities and disabled people’s organisations, not to mention clinically vulnerable people themselves, have been calling for more help for months.
The consequences of the government’s delay are clear to see. I reported in April 2020 that clinically extremely vulnerable people were going without food after being missed off the government’s shielding list. Meanwhile, I heard from disabled workers and carers who were being forced out to work at the height of the first lockdown. Without being on the government’s shielding list, they had no protection from bosses who demanded they leave their home or lose their job.
This fiasco has also added problems to the distribution of the vaccine. It is right that 800,000 more people are now eligible for priority access to the vaccine – we’ve been calling for that too – but these U-turns are also adding to the public’s confusion. Even before this latest change, I was hearing from many disabled people and care workers who did not know if they were on the vaccine priority list, and when they contacted their GP were wrongly told that they were not eligible. Many of these same people are now going to have to simultaneously navigate new shielding advice and chase information and support. This is hard enough if you’re healthy but a real strain if you’re coping with pain or fatigue.
The government’s shielding announcement comes only days after ONS figures showed almost two thirds of deaths involving coronavirus in England were disabled people. It is important to note that not all disabled people who died would have been clinically vulnerable, and we will need further analysis before drawing conclusions. But statistically it would not be unreasonable to worry that some of those who lost their lives may have been missed off the shielding list. Ministers, at a minimum, have a duty to investigate this.
Throughout the pandemic, high-risk people have been at best ignored and at worse discarded. Many in the rightwing media treated the term “underlying health conditions” as a euphemism for an acceptable death. Ministers barely used the word “disabled” in press conferences, instead perpetuating the false idea only “the elderly” were shielding. This latest mess is not shocking. It is not an aberration in an otherwise working system. It is the latest in a year-long failure, the crowning glory of a widespread public health disaster. In a pandemic, there is no greater dereliction of duty for a government than failing to protect its most vulnerable citizens.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
