This is the second big analysis of the deaths of people with learning disabilities in England to be published today. This one is from the @leder_team. It is available here as a full report and an easy read summary.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/leder/news/2020/leder-covid-19-reviews.html

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The report is an analysis of 163 LeDeR reviews of people with learning disabilities who died of COVID-19 and 43 reviews of people who died of other causes at the time of the first peak of COVID-19 in England.

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1) People with learning disabilities are dying of COVID-19 at younger ages (21% of people aged 18-49, and 48% of people aged 50-69) than people generally - these are similar scandalously young ages of death compared to people with learning disabilities dying of other causes
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2) There is a more mixed picture when it comes to ethnicity - amongst those reviewed, Asian/Asian British groups (but not Black/Black British groups) may be more likely to die of COVID-19.
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3) Over a third of deaths due to COVID-19 (36%) were amongst people described as 'severe/profound and multiple' learning disabilities.
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4) 35% of people with learning disabilities who died of COVID-19 were living in residential care and a further 19% of people were living in nursing care - only 22% of adults with learning disabilities getting social care live in residential or nursing homes.
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4b) 25% of people with learning disabilities who died of COVID-19 were living in supported living and 18% of people were living on their own or with their family.
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5) Of those people who died of COVID-19, 20% were people with Down's syndrome. This echoes other research suggesting that adults with Down's syndrome are at increased risk of dying from COVID-19 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4986
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6) Although numbers are small, people with learning disabilities dying of COVID-19 were more likely than people with learning disabilities dying of other causes in the same time period to have hypertension (33% vs 21%) or to be very overweight (33% vs 21%).
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7) 16 people who died of COVID-19 had received a shielding letter and another 11 were shielding in the absence of a letter. Of these 27 people, 20 lived in a staffed dwelling. Reviews reported a high proportion of COVID-19 infections coming from other residents or staff.
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8) Among the people with learning disabilities who died of COVID-19, no-one was reported to have lost their sense of smell and/or taste, but tiredness was more commonly reported than in people who died of other causes (39% vs 23% of people).
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9) The reviews revealed all sorts of problems with healthcare for people with learning disabilities who had died of COVID-19, including NHS111, getting COVID-19 tests, getting access to learning disability nurses, and health services adjusting to meet people's needs.
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10) For almost half of people who died of COVID-19 (44%), their care was rated by reviewers as not meeting or exceeding good practice.
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11) Several reviewers said that 'frailty' or 'learning disabilities' were given as rationales for a Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation notice for people who had died of COVID-19, but these rationales were not used when people had died of other causes.
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12) For many people who died of COVID-19, equipment where people lived that might help identify rapid deterioration in people's health was not available.
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13) This thorough analysis presents an unrelievedly grim picture of how people with learning disabilities died in the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in England.
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From failures of infection control, PPE, testing and identifying deterioration in people's health, through to poor and discriminatory practices across health services, this is systemic failure.
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But, this analysis also clearly points to how things could be done better. Almost all entirely foreseeable right at the start of the pandemic. Will pandemic peak 2 be any improvement?
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