LONDON (Reuters) – English health authorities will identify more people vulnerable to becoming seriously ill or dying of COVID-19 by combining risks factors including age, underlying clinical condition, ethnicity, body mass index and local levels of deprivation.
The new model will find up to 1.7 million additional people at risk, the government said.
More than half of those would have already been invited for vaccination given they are over 70, it said, but a remaining 820,000 adults between 19 and 69 years would be prioritised for a vaccination within the existing roll-out plan.
The model, developed by a team led by the University of Oxford using data gathered during the pandemic, will increase the number of people advised to shield, the government said.
It will identify those who are not already in the clinically extremely vulnerable group but who have multiple risk factors and underlying conditions that make them more susceptible to the disease.
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by William James)
