Dear Patient

You are strongly advised to shield

Review of your records indicates that you have been classed as being at high risk of developing complications if you were to contract coronavirus infection.

You are therefore being notified that you should shield. This essentially means staying at home at all times, and avoiding any face-to-face contact until it is safer.

You will have been referred to this page, so you will already have had a personalised letter regarding shielding. The letter is reproduced here ivy.gs/shieldingletter. Please read the letter as it provides important safety information from the NHS about what you need to do now.

Please also read guidance on shielding and protecting extremely vulnerable patients .

You may need extra support

Depending on your age and condition(s), you may need extra support. For instance, you might need help with shopping, fetching medications, or extra advice about keeping healthy.

If you feel you need support, there are various options to request it ivy.gs/covid-needhelp. A friend or relative can do this on your behalf.

You can also download the list of support groups.

We will also be passing our list of shielded patients over to our practice care co-ordinator and also the network social prescriber so that vulnerable patients can be contacted directly in order to offer support.

Manage existing/long-term conditions

You will also find additional information to help manage any long-term conditions or symptoms you might have at our GP 2.0 page ivy.gs/gp2.

Look after your mental health

We realise these are very difficult times for everyone and looking after your mental wellbeing is very important. We have therefore set up some links ivy.gs/covid-mentalhealth on our GP 2.0 page to help you.

How we have identified you

For your information, the conditions considered to be very high risk are:

• Solid organ transplant recipients
• People with specific cancers
  • People with cancer who are undergoing active chemotherapy or radical radiotherapy for lung cancer
  • People with cancers of the blood or bone marrow such as leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma who are at any stage of treatment
  • People having immunotherapy or other continuing antibody treatments for cancer
  • People having other targeted cancer treatments which can affect the immune system, such as protein kinase inhibitors or PARP inhibitors
  • People who have had bone marrow or stem cell transplants in the last 6 months, or who are still taking immunosuppression drugs
• People with severe respiratory conditions including all cystic fibrosis, severe asthma and severe COPD
• People with rare diseases and inborn errors of metabolism that significantly increase the risk of infections (such as SCID, homozygous sickle cell)
• People on immunosuppression therapies sufficient to significantly increase risk of infection
• People who are pregnant with significant heart disease, congenital or acquired
• Renal dialysis patients and those with chronic kidney disease stage 5
• Adults with Down's syndrome

If you have other questions

Due to a high level of calls we are receiving regarding this issue, we advise all patients toread guidance on shielding and protecting extremely vulnerable patients before getting in touch with us.