School of Health & Wellbeing

In the first wave of the pandemic, the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory began to investigate the rates of infection, case fatality and excess deaths due to COVID-19 for people with learning disabilities. This information was urgently required to inform clinical decision-making and public health policy in Scotland and the UK.

What was the problem?

People with learning disabilities die 20 years earlier than the general population, often from preventable or treatable conditions.

Throughout 2020, there was a major gap in the data available in Scotland on the impact of COVID-19 on people with learning disabilities. Given our knowledge of existing health inequalities and increased risk of death from respiratory conditions, it was critically important that this gap be addressed.

What did we do?

We linked information from Scotland’s Census 2011 with death registrations, hospital admissions records and COVID-19 testing data to investigate COVID-19 infection, hospitalisation and death rates.

We found that, overall, people with learning disabilities were over three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people in the general population.

We also found that people with learning disabilities were twice as likely to become infected with COVID-19, and twice as likely to experience a severe outcome of COVID-19 infection, resulting in hospitalisation and/or death.

What happened next?

• On 4^th February 2021, we published these preliminary findings to support urgent policy decision making in relation to vaccination priority groups.
• On 9^th February 2021, the Minister for Mental Health was asked for the Scottish Government’s response.
• On 17^th February 2021, the co-conveners of the Scottish Parliamentary Cross Party Group on Learning Disabilities wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Health & Sport. The letter cited the findings and called on the Scottish Government to issue guidance supporting all people in Scotland with a learning disability to come forward for vaccination under priority group 6.
• On 22^nd February 2021, the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that all people with a learning disability in Scotland were to be given priority group 6 status and that they were to be supported to access the vaccination programme.

Keith Lynch, Chairperson of People First (Scotland) said:

“Due to this research, people with learning disabilities are now included in group 6 of the vaccination. However, if the risk had been acknowledged earlier, all people with learning disabilities could have been included in group 4. The problem is not just that we face a lot more health issues than most people without a learning disability – many of our health conditions are preventable. We strongly believe that one of the reasons for high mortality and excess deaths is that we are not able to access the right medical care and information at the right time We must use the findings of this research as motivation to do better and protect the health of people with learning disabilities.”

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First published: 18 March 2025