The impact of primary care supported shielding on the risk of mortality in people vulnerable to COVID-19: English sentinel network matched cohort study.
Zarif A., Joy M., Sherlock J., Sheppard JP., Byford R., Akinyemi O., Bankhead CR., Deeks A., Ferreira F., Jones N., Liyanage H., McGagh D., Nicholson B., Oke J., Okusi C., Tripathy M., Williams J., Hobbs R., de Lusignan S.
OBJECTIVES: To mitigate risk of mortality from coronavirus 2019 infection (COVID-19), the UK government recommended 'shielding' of vulnerable people through self-isolation for 12 weeks. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study using a nationally representative English primary care database comparing people aged >= 40 years who were recorded as being advised to shield using a fixed ratio of 1:1, matching to people with the same diagnoses not advised to shield (n = 77,360 per group). Time-to-death was compared using Cox regression, reporting the hazard ratio (HR) of mortality between groups. A sensitivity analysis compared exact matched cohorts (n = 24,752 shielded, n = 61,566 exact matches). RESULTS: We found a time-varying HR of mortality between groups. In the first 21 days, the mortality risk in people shielding was half those not (HR = 0.50, 95%CI:0.41-0.59. p