The government-commissioned age-based ‘triage tool’ was the only guidance they had been given to deal with such difficult decisions, so they used it to systematically exclude the elderly, the frail and patients with underlying illnesses from critical care. Those patients would not be given life-saving mechanical ventilation regardless of the severity of their condition. This age-based criterion is alleged to have been applied by hospitals in London, Manchester, Liverpool, central England and the south-east. Many of those who died, after being excluded by the triage criteria, might well have
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