Nearly 200,000 people ‘extremely vulnerable’ to coronavirus STILL not contacted

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Nearly 200,000 people ‘extremely vulnerable’ to coronavirus including some with cancer and chronic kidney disease have STILL not received letters from the NHS telling them to stay home for three months

  • The Government announced it would contact 1.5 million people by March 29 
  • However, some 200,000 have still not been informed if they are vulnerable 
  • Over the Easter weekend, GPs and hospital staff in England were ordered to review their lists
  • Learn more about how to help people impacted by COVID

By Mark Hookham For The Mail On Sunday

Published: | Updated:

Almost 200,000 people deemed ‘extremely vulnerable’ to coronavirus have been put at risk after letters telling them to stay indoors for three months were delayed.

The Mail on Sunday has learnt that thousands of patients with serious medical conditions including cancer and chronic kidney disease have still not been advised to ‘shield’ in their homes.

The Government announced it would contact 1.5 million people by March 29 to tell them if they are ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ and should be ‘shielding’.

But the NHS has sent 1.31 million letters after scouring databases of GP, hospital and prescription records – leaving 190,000 vulnerable patients still to be traced.

The Government announced it would contact 1.5 million people by March 29 to tell them if they are ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ to coronavirus

Over the Easter weekend, GPs and hospital staff in England were ordered to review their lists to find the missing patients and set a deadline to complete the exercise by 5pm last Tuesday.

But Alex Freeman, a GP in southern England, wrote on Twitter: ‘The deadline is impossible to hit. To do this properly needs reviews of notes for every single patient in the list which takes time.’

In Wales, meanwhile, 13,000 letters for the most vulnerable were sent to the wrong addresses.

The Department of Health and Social Care said: ‘The NHS has already sent letters to more than 1.3 million people who are clinically extremely vulnerable.

‘We are confident everyone who has been identified so far has been contacted and we encourage people to get in touch with their GP if they are concerned.’