Are shielding criteria about to change??

[Flossie44]

Just wondered if anyone had heard if the shielding criteria is going to change now they know a bit more about the virus?

I don’t know whether they will change, but it would definitely make sense to review now that more is known.

The most recent data suggest that age is by far the most important factor ( the risk for the over 80s is 7000% of that of the under 40s).

By comparison, other underlying conditions have a much weaker impact. Some such as asthma have a relatively mild increase in risk (~25% increase in risk which given the very very low risk to under 40s is a very low absolute risk for anyone under 40). Even the highest factors at most double the risk for other individuals of the same age and sex. By contrast, men have double the risk of women at every age. So a woman aged 30 with diabetes has the same risk as a healthy man aged 30.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1.full.pdf

The shielding should be based on absolute risk.

This would mean the elderly and those with underlying conditions at a younger age from most people - say aged 60 if you have an underlying condition and aged 70 for everyone else. And possibly with a lower shielding age for men.