5m diabetics are told: Stay at home for three months

UP to five million patients with diabetes are being urged to stay at home and avoid seeing family and friends.

Other high-risk groups who should take precautions include the over-70s, pregnant women, those with heart conditions and the severely obese.

They are advised to avoid gatherings with friends and family, shun public transport and steer clear of GP surgeries – phoning them or going on their websites instead.

But within this high-risk group is a subset of 1.4million individuals who are considered ‘extremely high risk’, who will be urged to stay at home completely from next week.

They include cancer patients, organ donor recipients and those with severe asthma, kidney disease or cystic fibrosis. Separate guidelines from health chiefs will go out to these groups within days.

But they will essentially be urged to be housebound as much as possible for up to three months or longer.

Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical

Officer for England, said the advice would be in place for an undetermined ‘prolonged period’, possibly three or four months, as the virus reaches its peak.

In another major disruption to public life, the NHS will today announce hundreds of thousands of non-emergency operations will be cancelled.

The measures will apply to any procedure which is deemed ‘non-urgent’ and ‘non-time sensitive’ including hip and knee replacements, cataract treatment and hernia repairs.

Only life-saving operations and other treatments which cannot wait will go ahead, such as cancer and heart surgery, chemotherapy and kidney dialysis.

Up to 750,000 patients are admitted to hospital for non-urgent procedures in any given month which means more than two million patients would be affected over the next three months.