Coronavirus Shielded Patient List open data set, England

NHS Digital processed personal data to produce a Shielded Patient List (SPL) of patients in England who were previously identified as clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) due to a combination of individual characteristics and pre-existing health conditions, and at high risk of serious illness or death from coronavirus (also referred to as COVID-19). This important work helped the NHS to identify and protect the most vulnerable from COVID-19 and prioritise for vaccination.

The shielding programme in England has now ended, which means that those who were previously identified as CEV are no longer being asked to shield. However, the list is currently still being held and maintained by NHS Digital as information about those who were previously identified as CEV patients and is used by health and social care services to provide care and treatment, to plan health and social care services, and to carry out medical research. 

NHS Digital is conducting a managed closure of the SPL and the Transparency Notice will be updated to reflect any further changes as and when required.

The final version of the SPL dashboard is based on version 75 of the SPL clinical methodology with data extracted on 30 September 2021, which was last updated on 7 October 2021. 

The dashboard and the open data csv files, which are available to download, contain a count of living previously identified CEV patients on the SPL on the date when this data was extracted.

This open data contains

• a count of patients by CCG of residence, broken down by demographics (age band or gender) or disease group 
• a count of patients by Local Authority (LA) of residence, broken down by demographics (age band or gender) or disease group 
• a count of patients by Upper Tier Local Authority (UTLA) of residence, broken down by demographics (age band or gender) or disease group 
• a count of patients by ULTA of residence, broken down by ethnic category (1)
• a count of patients added or removed from each version of the SPL over time (1)
• patient counts of first and second dose vaccination uptake by CCG, LA and UTLA of residence, broken down by demographics (age band, gender or ethnic category (1) 

From October 2021, updates to the SPL dashboard stopped. The final dashboard is based on version 75 of the SPL with data extracted on 30 September 2021, and vaccinations data extracted on 4 October 2021.

The dashboard was last updated on 7 October 2021.

This data was accurate at the time of production.

To protect patient confidentiality

• all sub-national data was rounded to the nearest 5
• patient counts between 1 and 7 were suppressed and shown as '*'
• local authorities of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly were combined to create a larger geographical area
• local authorities of Hackney and City of London were combined to create a larger geographical area

If a patient was added or removed by both a GP and a hospital doctor, the GP assessment took priority.

If a patient was added or removed by either a GP or a hospital doctor, the latest reported request took precedence over the national methodology.

Only patients within a CCG or LA in England who were registered with a GP in England at the date of the SPL data extract were included in the analysis.

As a patient could be assigned to one or more disease groups, the sum of patients across all disease groups was not equal to the total number of patients on the SPL.

The CCG data includes the April 2021 CCG mergers on both the map and the tables.

The LA map data (Lower and Upper Tiers) reflects the 2020/21 boundaries for Northamptonshire.

The LA table data reflects the 2021/22 authorities for Upper Tier and the 2020/21 authorities for Lower Tier. These may be updated as and when the source system datasets are updated, only if required.