The Government has repeatedly comforted the general public by reiterating it is usually only the “clinically vulnerable” who are in serious danger from COVID-19. This has stoked immense fear among families like ours.
Then this week, the Government in England announced it would be easing shielding on 6 July and pausing advice to shield on 1 August. Muscular Dystrophy UK rounds this up here.
We have been reliant on occasional care parcels from friends, but completely cut off from our usual support network. The new guidance on shielding fails to address this.
And while single adults or single parents can form a support bubble with another household – and this is extremely welcome – other families like ours will remain very isolated. A picnic in the park, if we could find a quiet one, would be nice. But it doesn’t address the damage done by cancelled therapies and hospital appointments, or the challenge of juggling work, home schooling and providing daily care for a child with a progressive muscle-wasting condition.
We really welcome that aspects of the new shielding guidance may bring relief to some in the neuromuscular community. We ourselves certainly won’t be rushing to meet up with five or six people from other households, though, when there still isn’t a vaccine, an effective track and trace, or an antibody test in place.
Meanwhile, without protected park and shopping hours, pausing shielding will place enormous pressure on us to find quiet times to leave our home, which may not be possible. Having to play dodge like this will not only cause anxiety for many people, our son and others like him will genuinely still be at risk of infection.
Pausing shielding, without a managed access plan for public spaces and shops, is opening the gate to infection with no meaningful safety net. Wheelchair users like our son will find it extremely frustrating trying to maintain social distancing at a two-metre distance in public, in elevators, and so on. And with the distance reducing to one metre for the general public, having two separate distances doesn't seem workable. Members of the general public are struggling to maintain this themselves and the wearing of face masks is entirely haphazard due to very mixed messages from the authorities.
- If you would like to share your experiences of shielding or anything else from lockdown, please email: pressoffice@musculardytrophyuk.org