Number of people added by QCOVID by week
People added using the QCOVID algorithm first appeared in the 15th of February extract of the Shielded Patient List (~800,000 additions) and by the 22nd of February over 1.5 million people had been added this way. This number has remained relatively stable until the end of March, as have the number of people added through the national methodology.
Changes by deprivation
Local-authority level
At first sight, it appears that that more deprived local authorities saw the highest increase in the share of CEV people.
Local-authority level, by deprivation and starting point
Local authorities that already had a high share of CEV people saw smaller increases in the share of their population asked to shield (e.g. Liverpool, where almost 9% of people were on the SPL and this only increased by 1.5 percentage points after QCOVID). This trend, however, was most apparent in the most income-deprived local authorities — and these had the largest amount of variation in the starting point (% shielding before QCOVID). In other words, before QCOVID was applied, more affluent local authorities were more alike in terms of % who were CEV.
Aggregated by IMD income quintile
Changes by region
After QCOVID, London overtook the North West as the region with the highest proportion of people asked to shield. Some of the highest increases in % CEV after QCOVID happened in more income-deprived London boroughs (such as Newham, Tower Hamlets and Southwark).