Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason his Department amended the definition of severe asthma sufferers as those who were formally shielding, regularly take steroid tablets or had ever had an emergency hospital admission; and what impact assessment was undertaken before that definition was amended.

People suffering from severe asthma are more likely to have had an emergency hospital admission or have taken oral steroids for a specified frequency. These criteria were behind the decision to include severe asthma sufferers as part of priority group six for vaccination.

Regarding shielding, patients with severe asthma were identified as being priority group four or clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) by two routes. An algorithm was used to identify patients who received high levels of certain asthma medication. Inpatients were also directly added to the CEV list by a clinician in either primary or secondary care following the shielding advice for those with severe respiratory conditions, which was published by the British Thoracic Society in April 2020.