Disability campaigner launches petition for urgent inquiry into the treatment of the disabled community during the pandemic.

Gone, forgotten and undervalued. This is what it’s like to be disabled during the pandemic. 

Disability Campaigner and Ability Access Founder Simon Sansome is calling for an urgent independent inquiry in to the treatment of the disabled community during the pandemic. 

Simon said: ‘New data has shown that six out of ten people who have died from Covid 19 have a disability, it is criminal that this has happened to people with disabilities. 

Many people with disabilities have been shielding for more than a year, not seeing loved ones, most of the time seeing very little daylight or getting any fresh air at all, how can the fifth richest country in the world that has a world class NHS system let this happen and get so bad?’

Yesterday, Jo Whiley said she would do anything to give her Covid 19 jab to her family member as she was offered hers before her sister who has a learning disability and diabetes. 

While rates of people getting the jab has picked up the system has been a farce from start to finish, completely ignoring people with mental health issues, physical disabilities, learning disabilities and other major health issues. 

This was only updated in the last few days thanks to Jo Whiley and it’s only now an additional 1.2 million people qualify for the Covid jab. 

Over 113,000 have died, the highest rate in the world per capita and the majority of those had a disability. 

Simon added; ‘A full independent enquiry is needed to establish how this could have happened to this community’. 

Nearly six out of every ten people who died with coronavirus in England last year were disabled, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics .

It was also reported that people with learning disabilities were 3.7 times more likely to die of Covid than people who did not have a learning disability. 

The charity Mencap is calling for everyone with a learning disability to be in at least priority group six for the vaccine.

Chief executive Edel Harris said the current limitation to people with a “severe or profound” learning disability was “arbitrary and subjective”.

“[That definition is] not used by the medical profession,” she told the BBC.

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