Heart Diseases: Coronavirus

(asked on 11th May 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the medical advice that informed the decision to exclude heart failure patients from the extremely vulnerable category for covid-19.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 5th June 2020

Expert doctors in England identified specific medical conditions that, based on what we knew about the virus so far, placed someone at greatest risk of severe illness from COVID-19. These were signed off by the UK Senior Clinicians Group (including the four United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers and clinical leadership at NHS England and NHS Improvement, NHS Digital and Public Health England).

Some conditions are not suitable for blanket inclusion in the shielded list, particularly where there is a spectrum of severity of disease. No condition automatically excludes a patient from the list.

General practitioners and clinicians can, on a case-by-case basis, assess a patient’s suitability for shielding and, after consultation with the patient, add them to the centrally held list of patients who receive advice on shielding.

Reticulating Splines