OAPS ‘could have longer lockdown’

MINISTERS will consider imposing different coronavirus lockdown rules on the over-70s, Downing Street has indicated.

Officials said older people have a higher risk of becoming severely ill and it was “perfectly reasonable” to look at how measures are applied to different age groups.

Tory grandees and celebrities have warned against treating healthy pensioners differently from the rest of the population when current restrictions are eased.

Doctors leaders also urged the Government to apply rules based on individual risk instead of an “arbitrary age”.

Official guidance says the over-70s are clinically vulnerable and should only leave home “if it’s essential, for example, to get food or medicine”.

Impact

But Defence Secretary Ben Wallace insisted the instructions did not mean there is a “blanket rule” on treating older people differently.

He said: “If you are over 70 you should take extra precautions but it is not a blanket rule that if you are over 70 at the moment you are going to be treated differently from other people.”

No 10 said complications and deaths are more common in the older generation even in people without pre-existing health conditions.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “I think we know that as you get older there is a higher risk of coronavirus having a more serious impact.

“As we look forward it’s perfectly reasonable that we will look at how guidance will apply for different age bands.”

He insisted ministers will “continue to be guided by the science”.

He added: “You can see that currently over-70s are considered to be clinically vulnerable, but they are not in that ‘extremely vulnerable’ group – people who are ‘shielded’, necessarily. Some will be, but some are not.”