Britain’s Preparing For A Second Wave. But Shielders Like Me Are Being Left Behind
The country is coming to terms with the real threat of a ‘second wave’ and adapting to the latest government guidelines. For thousands of people like me who are clinically extremely vulnerable to coronavirus, it marks the beginning of a new and even more difficult phase in our national crisis.
A year ago, as a healthy 33-year-old I could never have imagined what the universe had in store for me. First, I was diagnosed with leukaemia and spent the autumn having intensive chemotherapy. Then in February I learned I would need a stem cell transplant, around the same time as the first few cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the UK. I spent March in hospital having my failing immune system completely wiped out by radiotherapy, and had my lifesaving transplant on the day the WHO declared a global pandemic. Getting home after weeks in isolation should have been a relief, but with the virus killing hundreds of people every day, it was obvious my recovery wasn’t going to be how I’d imagined it.
I was advised to shield from the beginning of lockdown until 1 August, when shielding officially stopped in England. This advice has not changed or been broken down according to medical conditions, despite research showing that people with blood cancer are at higher risk of becoming seriously ill from coronavirus than almost any other condition. Personally I’ve continued to limit my activities to hospital visits and country walks, because I can’t bear the thought of catching the virus now, after all the sacrifices I’ve already made just to be alive.
On Monday, Boris Johnson addressed the House of Commons to lay out new guidelines for keeping the virus at bay, but mentioned clinically vulnerable people only as an aside, telling us that we ‘do not need to shield’ unless we live in a local lockdown area. No scientific backing was given for this position; no acknowledgement of the fact that many of us never really stopped shielding; and no specific measures...
