“This has been the most alarming concern for people with disabilities all around the world,” said Catalina Devandas, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities. “The highlight of this drama is that it seems to be the default reasoning of the mainstream society: The lives of persons with disability are not considered to be of as much value.”

In the absence of guidelines from Britain’s top health officials, the same body that applies the £30,000 cap on new treatments — the official National Institute for Health and Care and Excellence, usually referred to by the acronym N.I.C.E. — sought to step in. Last week N.I.C.E. advised doctors to prioritize ventilator access in part by consulting a numerical score known as a Clinical Frailty Rating.

But the frailty rating is a measure of physical activity and general self-sufficiency that was designed to evaluate only seniors, not the broader population. Lawyers representing people with autism and other disabilities quickly complained, and N.I.C.E. amended its guidance to specifically rule out any application to younger people or those with learning disabilities or long-term disabilities, though patient advocates argued the changes were insufficient.

Then this week the British Medical Association, the main doctors trade group, issued its own general guidelines, arguing that its members and other health care providers should be given special priority. That way they might return to caring for others, the association reasoned.

“Decisions about which groups will have first call on scarce resources may also need to take account of the need to maintain essential services,” the medical association said. That should include, it said, “those individuals involved in tackling the immediate health and social care aspects of the pandemic, and particularly those with scarce and irreplaceable skills.”