Fit and healthy patients fall who ill with coronavirus should be given preference for critical care, new guidelines suggest.
Intensive care units at NHS hospitals have been overwhelmed by an influx of new patients with COVID-19, prompting fears over chronic bed shortages.
New guidance - issued by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) - will see ICU doctors triage patients based on their overall activity level and health as well as their ability to recover.
Hospitals in Italy have been crudely forced to discriminate between patients based on their age as they struggle to deal with a spike in cases, resulting over 5,000 deaths of mainly elderly vcitims.