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32-year-old man with no underlying health issue was offered a Covid vaccine early due to an error during his GP surgery who recorded him as 6.2cm tall, giving him a clue an astonishing body mass (BMI) of 28,000.
Liverpool Echo political editor Liam Thorp said he remained “really confused” after being offered the shot this week, apparently ahead of the government’s deployment plan, and shared the experience “frankly surrealist ”in a Twitter thread that quickly went viral.
Manchester Evening News policy and investigative editor Jennifer Williams replied: “Shouldn’t they have been in touch before to see how this thumb-sized man was doing?” And hospice doctor Rachel Clarke said, “This is, for me, the best tweet of the whole pandemic, Liam. And can I please commend your decency for not tapping into your remarkable BMI to skip the queue? “
After his first surprise at the invitation, Thorp said he felt like you should accept an invitation and make an appointment, but then felt “uncomfortable” with the situation, in especially with so many vulnerable people yet to be vaccinated.
Those under 50 with no underlying health issues are the last group on the government’s priority list and should not be offered the vaccine until the summer.
After calling his GP to ask if there had been a mistake, Thorp learned he had been placed in priority group six because of his weight. Writing in the Echo, he said that despite being “on the chunky side, I would not have considered myself clinically obese (even after the lockdown)”.
After “serious soul-searching” and a review of Pancake Day plans, Thorp was called back for surgery the next day. “What followed was one of the weirdest phone conversations of my life,” he writes.
As it turned out, his details were entered into the system incorrectly, with his height recorded at 6.2cm instead of 6ft 2in (188cm). Combined with his weight, this had given Thorp a BMI of 28,000 – about 1,000 times the UK average – which would have made him morbidly obese. “I don’t know how he kept it together when he told me that,” he wrote.
“If I had been less stunned I would have asked why no one cared more than a man of these remarkable dimensions sneaking into south Liverpool. But he was very sorry and really sweet and I think he was just relieved that I found it so funny.
Thorp also shared a hilarious interaction with his mother after sharing the crash on Twitter. “When I told my mom that I had been classified as clinically obese, she said, ‘Maybe this is the wake-up call you need.’
Thorp said the confusion showed how important it was for people to check if they thought they had been invited for the jab by mistake.
The NHS Liverpool clinical commissioning group said it was ‘grateful’ to Thorp for checking with his GP. Its chairman, Dr Fiona Lemmens, said: “I can see the funny side of this story, but I also recognize that there is an important problem to be solved.”
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