December 11, 2024

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Healthy young people prioritised for Covid vaccine because of gaps in GP records

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Healthy young people may have been bumped up the vaccine priority list because GPs had no record of their weight or ethnicity, health officials have admitted.

Last month the priority list for vaccines was updated, with around 1.7 million extra people pushed up the order, because a new calculator deemed them “clinically extremely vulnerable”.

They were also added to Government shielding lists, meaning they were told to take extra precautions, with access to some extra support, such as supermarket priority slots.

Around half of those added to the list should have already had the jab, because of their age.

But over the last month, GPs have been scrambling to reach 800,000 younger people who were seen as particularly vulnerable because of factors such as weight and ethnicity.

Now it has emerged that 430,000 patients were given a boosted risk score because of gaps in their records.

When family doctors had no record of weight, cases were automatically counted as obese – the group most vulnerable to severe disease from Covid, officials from NHS Digital said.

If ethnicity data was not on record, the risk was classed as if they were black. And if no postcode was available, they were given the risk of living in the most deprived area, they said.

Watch: Supercomputer shows effectiveness of double masking

The scores were among a number of factors analysed to decide who was on the priority list.

NHS Digital told GP magazine Pulse that approximately 430,000 patients had one or more default value used because of missing data, and admitted that the risk assessment result may therefore overestimate risk for some of these individuals.

However NHS Digital said it was “highly unlikely” that one single missing score would be enough to push an individual over the priority threshold. A spokesperson said: “Patients can speak to their GP or specialist clinician if they have questions, or if they feel they should no longer be identified as clinically extremely vulnerable.”

“As they have always done, GPs and specialist clinicians can make their own assessment and are able to add and remove individuals from the Shielded Patient List. GPs can also review the free text entry alongside the high-risk flag on individual records to identify whether or not default values were used.’

The list of people classed as “clinically extremely vulnerable” was expanded last month after scientists developed a new tool which assesses risk of severe disease or death.

The predictive risk model developed by researchers at Oxford University also examines health conditions, and postcodes, as a proxy for deprivation.

Around 2.2 million people were previously on the list, because of cancers, immunosuppression and severe respiratory conditions. The additional 1.7 million brought the number on the list to almost four million.

Last month Dr Jenny Harries, deputy Chief Medical Officer for England said the tool would help to better protect the most vulnerable.

She said: “This action ensures those most vulnerable to COVID-19 can benefit from both the protection that vaccines provide, and from enhanced advice, including shielding and support, if they choose it.”

Watch: Report finds obesity major factor in COVID-19 deaths

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