Covid: Should people with diabetes shield?

[Cheesecake]

Apologies if this is discussed elsewhere, I’ve had a look and couldn’t find it, but if it is please point me in the right direction!

I’ve just been having an online chat with a group of friends, T1, T2 and a T1 carer, and we were puzzling over people with diabetes being put in the 6th priority group for the vaccine, over people aged 60, but not being, generally, told to shield.

It was really interesting as the two points seemed opposite, diabetics are at risk enough to need the vaccine quite quickly, but can crack on going to work etc. I wondered what people’s take on it here would be. We discussed with 4 million diabetics it might just been too big a group to shield, double the original shielding group, or that diabetics might be a good uptake group of the vaccine as many of us have our annual flu jab.

I know many diabetics would of shielded if they had complications, but equally many, myself included, have continued life within the rules and I’m not sure if I should have!

 

[grovesy]

Diabetes alone was not classed as reason to shield. It has been discussed many times in many threads over the last few months.
The research shows that age even with Diabetes is one of the main risk factors.
There is a link at the top of the page that takes you to the latest information.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

There is a link at the top of the page that takes you to the latest information.

Here's another one (looking specifically at the vaccine priorities): Why I am in a higher priority group for a vaccine than younger people with chronic health conditions

 

[Inamuddle]

I know of at least two Diabetics with T1 who were told to shield (put on the very vunerable register) but had no other complications. I was told to shield also but I do have a heart condition too so that made sense. I assumed it was one of the conditions that the Doctor could make individual choices on. I found it all very confusing.

 

[Cheesecake]

The link @grovesy is to the general information, which I have read, I was looking for the discussions you’ve mentioned, are there any specific threads you could point me towards?

I really like the idea of working out your “Covid age” discussed in the article @Bruce Stephens, but that doesn’t link to the guidance about (generally) how people with diabetes should be acting, although I suppose if someone has a higher covid age then their team should of told them to shield,

 

[Docb]

Hi @Cheesecake. There has been a bit of discussion on this topic in various threads on the forum. Generally the consensus seems to be that that having diabetes in itself does not mean somebody should shield. The early data suggested that those with out of control diabetes, that is having an HbA1c of over 80, had a statistically greater risk of dying from it if they were amongst the small part of the population that got the infection and then had a severe reaction. This has tended to be transposed by the media, fuelled no doubt by vested interests, into the idea that all people with diabetes are at great risk. In reality, if your diabetes is under control then decisions should be made on other factors.

I like to think that for myself my well controlled diabetes is not a problem. Being 75 and a bloke is far, far more significant.

I also got the sense that shielding recommendations were left to GP's and that some felt there were inconsistencies in the decision making. Whether there were or not you will never know because the decisions were individual and you cannot know all of the factors taken into account.

My usual caveat... I am in no way underplaying the severity of the disease by referring to a small part of the population being affected. A small part of the population is a lot of people and 70,000 and counting deaths involving the virus is tragic. More so because many could have been avoided by better handling of the response to it as shown by other countries around the world.

 

[grovesy]

The link @grovesy is to the general information, which I have read, I was looking for the discussions you’ve mentioned, are there any specific threads you could point me towards?

I really like the idea of working out your “Covid age” discussed in the article @Bruce Stephens, but that doesn’t link to the guidance about (generally) how people with diabetes should be acting, although I suppose if someone has a higher covid age then their team should of told them to shield,

As I said in my reply they have been lots so perhaps do a forum search of covid in the title and see what it throws up.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

There were a number of threads in the spring @Cheesecake, especially after the research was published that showed a relatively high proportion of those who had sadly died with Covid also had some form of diabetes.

What was interesting, and really crucial, though was that age was still by far the greatest risk factor. And that people at a younger age who had diabetes had a very similar level of risk to the general population for contracting a severe case and then going on to die. There was additional risk for elevated HbA1c and obesity, but these don’t affect everyone with diabetes. As an example the headline T1 data were pretty frightening - something like 3x the risk of death I think... but drill into the numbers and the average age of the T1s who had died in the data set was 75 or similar - T1s in their 40s were at equivalent risk to the general population, and there had been no deaths in T1s in their 20s at all.

Having diabetes doesn’t make it any more likely that you will contract Covid, nor that you will go on to develop a severe case. It only seems to have an impact for the relatively small numbers who actually do.

So while I am being careful to socially distance and take reasonable precautions I do not feel that it is appropriate for me to shield or self isolate.