Families are worried that people with learning disabilities have not been prioritised. Who can blame them?
A review by the Care Quality Commission of the allocation of do not resuscitate orders to some care home residents without consultation, during the first wave of the pandemic, is expected shortly. But already, new concerns have been raised that the same practices may be recurring. Normally, these orders should only be made when people are too frail to benefit. But the charity Mencap says that it has heard recently from people with learning disabilities who are concerned that they have been barred from potentially life-saving treatments.
There are complaints, too, about the vaccine rollout, with questions raised both about the prioritisation criteria and the decisions made regarding specific cases. Six out of 10 people who died from Covid until November last year had a disability, with disabled adults aged 18-34 dying at 30 times the rate of the general population. While the government’s medical advisers decided that the over-65s faced a higher risk of death than many younger disabled people, some campaigners believe that more people with disabilities should be classed as “extremely vulnerable”.
