People with learning disabilities have been told not to revive orders during the second wave of the pandemic, despite widespread condemnation of the practice last year and an urgent investigation by the care watchdog.
Mencap said he received reports in January from people with learning disabilities that they had been told they would not be able to breathe again if they fell ill with Covid-19.
The Care Quality Commission said in December that inappropriate notifications for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) could have caused deaths last year.
DNACPRs are usually made for people who are too weak to benefit from CPR, but Mencap said that some people seem to have been issued simply because they have a learning disability. The CQC must publish a report on the practice within a few weeks.
The revelation comes as campaigners put increasing pressure on ministers to reconsider a decision not to give people with learning disabilities priority over vaccinations. There is growing evidence that even those with mild disabilities are more likely to die if they contract the coronavirus.
Although some people with learning disabilities such as Down’s syndrome were in one of the four groups set up by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), which offered the vaccine to the government tomorrow, many were classified as lower categories of needs and were it’s still waiting.
NHS figures released last week show that Covid-19 reported 65 percent of deaths among people with learning disabilities in the five weeks since the third closure began. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the rate for the general population was 39%, although the two statistics were drawn from different measurements.
Younger people with learning disabilities between the ages of 18 and 34 are 30 times more likely to die from Covid than others, according to Public Health England.
Edel Harris, CEO of Mencap, said: ‘During the pandemic, many people with a learning disability had shocking discrimination and barriers to accessing health care, with inappropriate notifications of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) on their files are placed, and the tracks that support their social care.
‘It is unacceptable that within a group of people who are so badly affected by the pandemic, and who even before Covid died on average more than 20 years younger than the general population, are still very scared and wonder why they were left out.
“The JCVI and the government must now take action to help save the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in society by giving urgent priority to all people with a learning disability for the vaccine.”
More than 14 million people have so far received a first dose of vaccine, and suppliers who spoke to the group Observer said many people with learning disabilities have been vaccinated in the past week. But some are still waiting. One woman from the West Midlands who has a rare form of Down’s syndrome has the Observer she has not yet received an appointment.
“It’s really frustrating – it was a fight and it should not have been a fight,” she said. Her condition means she is in category four – people who are clinically extremely vulnerable – but her GP has not recorded details of her condition – a common problem, according to Mencap.
“I had to call them many times,” she said. The practice accepted last week that she needed to be vaccinated, she said, but she was still waiting. “For people in a similar situation to me, they will not get along with me just as badly.”
According to Keri-Michèle Lodge, a consultant for learning disabilities in psychiatry in Leeds, it is a lack of dwarfism due to the reason why people with learning disabilities are more likely to die from Covid-19 than the rest of the population.
“Doctors often do not understand that someone with a learning disability may not be able to communicate their symptoms,” she said. ‘Sometimes caregivers are not listened to – you can see that something is wrong, but it is often written off as part of their behavior.
‘People with learning disabilities already receive an indefinite price from the health services. Less than two out of every five people with a learning disability live until they are 65. ”
An analysis by the Office for National Statistics last week showed that six out of ten Covid deaths were people with disabilities.
“The biggest factor associated with the increased mortality rate due to their analysis was living in nursing homes or residential areas,” Lodge said. ‘They prefer people in care homes to vaccinations, but that was only for older adults. They have completely forgotten people with learning disabilities in a similar environment. I do not know whether the government was blinded or simply negligent. ”
Professor Martin Green OBE, Care England’s CEO, said: “As the largest representative body for independent adult social care providers, Care England remains concerned that the government is not giving individuals with a learning disability a higher priority level for the Covid vaccine has not given.
‘We call on the government to prioritize the arbitrary distinction between those with a severe or severe learning disability and those with a mild or moderate learning disability, and to prioritize all those with a learning disability in priority group four. People with learning disabilities should never be overlooked. ”
• The heading of this article was amended on 13 February 2021 to remove an incorrect reference to ‘learning problems’.