The CQC yesterday published statistics which indicate that there has been a significant rise in deaths reported of people with a learning disability and/or autism who are users of services registered with the CQC.
Whilst the data used by the CQC has its limitations, the analysis suggests an increase of deaths reported between the period of 10 April and 15 May 2020 of 134% compared to the same period last year. This includes those in residential care, community care settings and “other” settings which the CQC has not disclosed details of, which support approximately 30,000 people per year.
Of the 386 people with a learning disability and/or autism who were reported to have died during this period in 2020, over half were reported to have died as a result of suspected and/or confirmed cases of Covid-19 and the remaining 180 were not.
The CQC have highlighted that this data suggests that Covid-19 may be disproportionately affecting younger people who have learning disabilities and/or autism compared to the general population. This is a sad state of affairs, and we welcome the CQC’s call for this to demonstrate that this group of service users should be specifically considered for testing programmes.
The CQC’s full article is available here. They have also produced an easy-read version of their analysis, which is available here.
