40 per cent of clinically extremely vulnerable people were only told to shield after the peak of the first Covid wave, a report out today has found.
The National Audit Office report found that the shielding programme was a swift government-wide response to protect clinically extremely vulnerable people against COVID-19.
However, at the start of the pandemic there was no way to quickly identify all those who needed to shield, with the full list of those eligible for support not stabilising until May.
Several problems arose when compiling the shielded patient list (the List). Hospital data, while immediately available, was seven weeks out of date and did not always specify sufficient detail of people’s medical condition, meaning some were unnecessarily advised to shield. The time taken to identify CEV people was largely down to the challenge of extracting usable data from different NHS and GP IT systems.
By 12 April, 1.3 million people were identified as formally eligible for the Programme’s central support offering of food boxes and medicines delivery. Of these, 870,000 were identified using hospital, prescribed medicines and maternity data. GP patient data was used to identify an additional 420,000 people.
By 7 May, a further 900,000 people were identified as CEV and formally eligible for support through the shielding programme. 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 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.” says Gareth Davies, head of the NAO
“However, challenges pulling together data meant it took time to quickly identify those needing to shield, and therefore eligible for support. Government has learnt lessons from this programme and is better placed should this type of support be required again.”
