‘Those with autoimmune conditions are ripe for falling through the cracks’: Chronic illness in the age of coronavirus

Last week Anita Howell told her boss she would be taking three months of unpaid leave from her job as a supermarket checkout worker because of her fears over the coronavirus. The 45-year-old from Burgess Hill in West Sussex has chronic asthma and is in remission from breast cancer, but she’s not only worried about her own health. Her husband Simon is on a strong course of immunosuppressant drugs following a life-saving kidney transplant in 2018.