Recommendation 9

The list of medical conditions that the chief medical officers developed to define clinically extremely vulnerable people was shared with NHS Digital on 18 March 2020. DHSC tasked NHS Digital to use patient data to identify those affected and create a list of people to be advised to shield (the shielded patient list – or the list).16 NHS Digital held or had easy access to some patient data but GP data were held within GP IT systems, which were not immediately accessible to NHS Digital.17