The announcement of the departure of England’s deputy chief medical officer Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, or JVT as he’s known, heralds the loss of one of the truly standout communicators of the pandemic.

JVT was to Covid-19 what Sir David Attenborough is to the natural world, or Professor Brian Cox is to physics. One of the key aspects of pandemic management is explaining to the public at large what the science means to them at home in a trustworthy manner that people can grasp.

With an academic background in respiratory viruses, the Boston United fan had been a massive asset to the Department of Health and Social Care since 2007, when he was appointed on secondment from the University of Nottingham. Although he already had experience of dealing with high-profile health emergencies, such as the Salisbury novichok incident, he really came into his own once Covid arrived, with his pithy use of metaphors to get his message across.

One of my favourite JVT quotes was when he was asked to explain the reasons for the supply chain for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine requiring a -70C (-94F) freezer. Of an important detail that, let’s face it, would send most of us to sleep, he said: ‘This is a complex product. It’s not a yoghurt that can be taken out of the fridge and put back in multiple times.’

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single swear word summed up the feeling in my GP group chat as they went on to alert me of the Government’s announcement on Sunday to deliver a third Covid-19 booster to all adults who want one by the end of the year.

My heart sank. I understood my colleagues’ dismay as I learned of the plan to ‘pause’ routine care to prioritise the boosters. We are all too aware of the current backlogs. Waiting lists have reached record highs as nearly six million people wait, while GPs see patients deteriorate, only to need increased care and more attention from the NHS. Meanwhile, hospitals continue to struggle with capacity.

We’re all worried there’s very little resilience within the system and GPs will still be asked to soldier on despite increasing pressures.

Throughout the pandemic GPs have been grossly undermined for managing this workload and maintaining safe working practices for both patients and staff. We’ve not fully recovered from this, and the distrust it has built makes the job much harder – for some untenable.

Colleagues routinely report ‘so much anger’ from the very people they are trying to help. It’s mis-directed and continues to be fuelled by our leaders under the guise of face-to-face appointments. I long for our politicians to admit how complex the issues are around our broken healthcare system. Instead, we see GPs flitting from being the scapegoats to the solution at the whim of a press release. The impact on morale is evident and GPs are, understandably, leaving in their droves.

So why are we not saying no to this disruption? The Omicron variant is much more contagious and it’s evading the vaccine and natural immunity – but less so with a third booster. Pfizer recently announced there will be four billion BNT162b2 vaccines produced – what we currently use – and this formula is not expected to change as they’re not able to adapt to new variants and scale up fast enough.

The latest report from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre shows that just over half of Covid ICU admissions in the last two months were in those who were double vaccinated. Omicron is only thought to have spread within our population in the last few weeks, so this may not simply be attributed to a new variant. Simply put, this booster programme is our best chance of more of us remaining well and out of hospitals.

Mitigations beyond vaccines may be even more important with a rapidly growing anti-vax movement. Mitigations beyond vaccines may be even more important with a rapidly growing anti-vax movement, which has surged by millions and this could have ramifications to all of our vaccine programmes. The success of vaccines depends on herd immunity.

There are whispers that Test and Trace will continue until 2025 – a good hint life with coronavirus is here to stay. It’s time to embrace this as our normal for our own sanity. The Doctors’ Association UK supports normalised mask wearing with their #MaskUp campaign and perhaps splurge on the best perfume infused alcohol gel.

GPs will, I’m sure, again heroically deliver on this booster programme but the cost has to be levelled with long-term resilience building. More people will be in dire need of care as soon as this pause reverts to play and the GPs that are left to pick up the pieces may not be able to sustain this without expecting much better working environments. This includes professional respect, a stronger focus on other safeguards against the virus and future pandemics.

We need to embrace mitigations that don’t simply build on the shoulders of a very worn workforce that have simply been trying to do their best through the pandemic.

Perhaps it’s time we come round to the idea of what responsibility we can take and ask for more non-vaccine future proofing, in the hope that we can get on with our lives.

Dr Yasotha Browne is a GP and Diversity Lead with the Doctors’ Association UK

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There are nearly 14,000 people in UK hospitals with Covid currently. Far fewer than at last year’s peak but rising rapidly in my own region, the West Midlands, doubling to more than 2,400, two weeks after Omicron first surged.

Meanwhile, politicians seem to be in denial on the reality of the stresses to the NHS. More than 110,000 NHS staff, nearly one in ten, were absent on New Year’s Eve. And nearly 50,000 were at home sick or self-isolating due to Covid.

What does that mean to individual doctors? My colleagues in medicine and intensive care are reporting increasing levels of burnout.

My personal low point of 2021 was having an MS Teams call from Hell via a court hearing, explaining to two teenage daughters overseas that their father had unsurvivable brain injuries and he was dying – knowing full well that owing to the travel restrictions they wouldn’t be able to be at his side when he passed. Such incidents leave their scars on all our staff. I was recanting the story to some friends recently and started crying, realising that this is not normal.

There will be many, many staff who will have experienced similar horrors and are dreading this winter. To date, the pressures on medical wards have been greater than those on intensive care, but as happened previously with Covid, things change very rapidly.

I dread having to speak to staff about adding to their workload.

Last year, when I approached some nursing colleagues to assist on Covid wards in the second wave, one collapsed in tears in front of me at the thought and another had their PTSD reawakened. Such was the stress of dealing with the first wave. Staff have had enough. The hollow words of any politician are just that – an empty vessel.

The prospect of ‘mini- Nightingale’ hospitals in car parks to deal with the bed crisis provokes laughter from colleagues: who is going to staff them?

Omicron is affecting all of us as NHS staff members – and our families. For example, my New Year’s Eve was spent driving over 50 miles for my son to be tested for Covid symptoms – the irony being that the PPE I used on my journey was of better quality than the surgical masks many healthcare professionals use when dealing with suspected Covid cases.

The Doctors Association UK, along with other organisations, has been campaigning for months for improvements in PPE to reduce staff sickness. A step that doubtlessly could save lives, as would improving ventilation, in addition to the vaccine programme. But these are steps that Sajid Javid and Boris Johnson seem immune to change.

I had a huge sense of relief at my son’s negative test, as I wasn’t entirely sure who would manage my work if I had to self-isolate. I work in a department of two full-time neurologists, where we should have three times that figure.

Meanwhile, one hospital trust in Lincolnshire has declared a critical incident due to ‘staff-related absences from Covid’. And there is no doubt in my mind that there are many other trusts in the same position that we don’t hear about.

A catch-22 paradox, which plays into the hands of conspiracy theorists when local people should know the stresses that their local hospital is under.

In some trusts, staff are being asked to come in from annual leave. As such, England is an outlier of the four nations – while Boris is paralysed into indecision by his backbenchers. We’ll find out within two months which government was correct.

It’s worth noting to add to this mess, the staffing crisis is worsened by overseas doctors who are, in effect, unable to work by a combination of cancelled language assessments via the General Medical Council.

So, despite all this talk of a ‘war footing’, the failures by government of leadership are more reminiscent of the fictional wartime leader General Melchett of Blackadder than any budding Winston Churchill: ‘If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.’

Our staffing crisis would be funny if it wasn’t so deadly serious. 

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My first thought when I saw pictures of the Prime Minister strolling maskless through a hospital yesterday? ‘There’s a man who thinks rules don’t apply to him’. 

For Boris Johnson to turn up and not wear a mask on a visit to Hexham General Hospital in Northumberland was nothing more than a kick in the teeth to the thousands of NHS staff who do so daily. Indeed, the healthcare workers who he met on the visit were all wearing masks. His lack of respect was captured in a picture of him meeting three masked nurses as he joked around elbow bumping the no doubt astonished staff. 

Considering he ended up in intensive care with Covid-19 last year, why is it that he shows such craven disregard for a virus that could have killed him? The hospital’s rules could not be more explicit: ‘Anyone attending our hospitals and community settings must continue to wear a face-covering at all times to protect patients, visitors and staff.’ 

But what did we expect? Johnson couldn’t be bothered to turn up to Sage meetings at the beginning of the pandemic, ripped up all forms of mitigation on ‘Freedom Day’ in July – even as cases were rising – and has failed to take any action against any of his colleagues, such as Jacob-Rees Mogg, who fail to wear a mask. Is it any wonder there’s been an outbreak of coronavirus in the House of Commons? The fact of the matter is that the rules on personal protective equipment have not changed, but to Johnson, it’s all a big joke.

I am of the view that his sloppy leadership and negligence has arguably led to thousands of avoidable deaths – but then his behaviour is identical to Donald Trump, who while President, refused to wear a mask in a PPE factory. It seems unbelievable that we’ve still not learned the lessons of basic infection control in this pandemic, nearly two years in. Look at our European counterparts such has Macron or Angela Merkel: both are never seen without a mask in public. 

In the first six months of the pandemic, my 25-bed neurology ward had more deaths from Covid than that experienced in the entire population of Taiwan in the same period where airborne pandemics such as Covid or SARS are treated with the gravity they deserved. Obviously, the vaccines have made a big difference, but the Delta variant is much more transmissible so using the right kind of masks is also key – especially in a hospital setting where both staff and patients are vulnerable.

My colleagues in the Doctors’ Association UK have been highlighting the importance of staff having access to the best-quality PPE from the start of this pandemic. Rightly so, when more than 1,000 NHS and social care workers have died from Covid. From the beginning, we were told by Johnson that ‘we were following the science’, yet his own behaviour and that of his colleagues exhibits the exact opposite. 

Last month, in an article in the respected academic journal Science, experts presented evidence that mandatory mask wearing and social distancing on public transport in rush hour in South Korea’s capital, Seoul, reduced infection rates by 93 per cent and 98 per cent respectively. Then again, in South Korea, there is much more widespread use of higher-grade masks even on public transport, better than those most NHS staff use.

Wearing a mask to reduce the risk of spreading Covid should become like taking an umbrella with you when it looks like it could rain. We need to normalise this. Such that the behaviour of Johnson or Rees-Mogg should seem as embarrassing as someone who turned up for a speech with his fly undone or as repugnant as someone who goes to the bathroom without washing their hands. Which ends with my final point: why did the staff not challenge him? If any visitor turned up on my ward without wearing a mask, I wouldn’t let them in – Prime Minister or not. You actually follow the science or you get out of my ward. We should stop tolerating rule-breakers – because stupidity will be the death of us.

Dr David Nicholl is a consultant neurologist based in Birmingham and a committee member of the Doctors’ Association UK which has a #MaskUp campaign

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Last week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced that England could become the first country to prescribe e-cigarettes, as updated guidance from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) encourages vaping manufacturers to license their products as medicines. The NHS has endorsed vaping devices for some time to entice smokers to quit cigarettes, but prescribing them has not been an option before.

E-cigarettes use a liquid form of nicotine that is heated into a vapour to be inhaled – avoiding the harmful smoke generated by tobacco.

As a doctor and the partner of a smoker, I fully encouraged his decision to quit smoking when we had our first baby. I was cautious, however, about vaping. With my heightened sense of smell during pregnancy, I found the odour of the vape just as unpleasant as the scent of cigarettes – and I had serious concerns about the safety of him using an unregulated product.

But we all know the harms of smoking – it’s the main cause of preventable illnesses and deaths in England, costing the economy more than £11billion each year. The long-term data on e-cigarettes is just not available as they haven’t been around that long, but experts at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence expect these products are less harmful than smoking. And now the MHRA has advised that vaping products will have to meet certain standards to be prescribed, as well as medical device safety regulations.

While e-cigarettes are certainly not completely risk-free, the evidence available at present – supported by these NICE guidelines – has found regulated e-cigarettes are shown to do less harm than smoking.

As a GP, I do have concerns that this news of e-cigarettes becoming ‘available on prescription’ will prompt an influx of patients to an already overwhelmed primary care service. With the current concerns about GP access, people wanting to stop smoking should be aware that this is one problem they can bypass their GP with.

At present, people wanting to quit smoking are able to access smoking cessation support services in their local areas. Staff – such as pharmacists – working in these essential services are specially trained to provide a combination of behavioural support and, if needed, pharmacotherapy to help people to stop. So people shouldn’t need to approach their GP for this and can get the ball rolling by contacting smoking helplines (listed below).

Sadly, my husband took up smoking again during the pandemic. I know too well that tirelessly listing the health risks of smoking – lung and other cancers, coronary heart disease leading to heart attack, cerebrovascular disease leading to stroke, peripheral vascular disease leading to amputation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and infertility – doesn’t help a smoker to quit. It’s not a realistic approach. But perhaps knowing e-cigarettes are a freely available option from NHS smoking services may provide a real incentive to quit for good.

For me, the biggest concern about smoking is my children breathing in secondhand smoke. Even if smokers go outside to light up, the smoke remains on clothes, and babies are particularly vulnerable to the effects of this. Children exposed to passive smoke are at increased risk of developing chest infections, glue ear and asthma, and they are at increased risk of cot death.

My view? If an NHS vape can help someone to stop and reduce the risks of all of these conditions then surely that’s a good thing.

NHS smokefree helpline: smokefree.nhs.uk  0300 123 1044

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Covid-19 has caused chaos for me over the past month, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’ve got children in primary school, work as a GP – and yes, I do see most of my patients face-to-face – and I’ve had to leave my safe little corner of rural Wales a lot recently, for a party, a course and a wedding.

One striking thing, especially going across the border into England, is how people’s habits around mask wearing vary so dramatically in different settings.

We know that Covid is an airborne virus, so it seems completely sensible that wearing masks when we’re indoors with other people should be normalised. It certainly has become so in most other parts of the world, but somehow, in the UK, nothing is so straightforward.

Travelling through England last weekend on a packed train, windows closed and steamy, I noticed that only a handful of passengers wore masks. We loosely clustered together at one end of the carriage.

For all the debate about mask mandates and hype about ‘freedom day’, the UK population is still quite uninformed about some of the most important basic facts about masks.

There’s a growing body of evidence that says mask quality is important. An FFP3 mask, which seals on the wearer’s face, is better than an FFP2, which is fitted but not sealed. Below them come surgical masks, and then cloth masks.

I rarely see anyone wearing an FFP2 or FFP3 in any setting, and yet, if you or your immediate contacts are clinically vulnerable, that would be one of the best interventions within your power, after vaccination, to reduce your risk. I’ve yet to find a brick-and-mortar pharmacy or shop selling them, although you can order them easily online. And at this stage in the pandemic, there shouldn’t be any supply problems. You won’t be depriving a health worker or carer. Only the UK’s inadequate PPE guidance does that.

Counterintuitively, when something is worth doing, it’s also worth doing badly. In the same way that brushing your teeth for 20 seconds is better than not brushing them at all, a person wearing some sort of mask some of the time is better than none at all.

And the more you do it, the more benefit you get. In the context of a pandemic, if we want to get our rates down, it’s probably better for lots of people to do a half-hearted job of it, than only a handful of people to do it really well. That’s why we need to work hard to normalise mask wearing across as many indoor settings as possible.

At my cousin’s wedding, I was the only person wearing a mask. I went for a black cloth one which didn’t detract from my outfit. In the lovely, spacious, high-ceilinged hotel it felt like a safe compromise. Several people told me they’d planned to wear one themselves, but didn’t feel brave enough or want to stand out. Removing the mask mandate from social settings appears to have actually made those people feel less free to protect themselves and their loved ones.

In parliament, Jacob Rees-Mogg expressed a health belief which would be quite quaint if it wasn’t so dangerous to the general population: that the ‘convivial, fraternal spirit’ between him and his fellow Conservatives would somehow protect them from giving each other coronavirus.

The message that masks aren’t necessary between friends makes it harder for those who want to take the logical step of wearing one when they meet indoors to socialise. Care Minister Gillian Keegan’s reference to masks as a ‘sign of virtue’ adds yet another psychological barrier. Who wants to be seen as a neurotic, unfriendly virtue-signaler?

If public health departments and Government are serious in wanting to control the pandemic and avoid further lockdown, it shouldn’t be beyond them to create a marketing campaign that makes mask wearing more attractive. To give wearing a mask a different meaning than the one it has currently. We need to normalise mask wearing across as many different settings where people share air as possible, like most of the rest of the world.

The strongest argument I can think of is: Mask Up! Everyone’s doing it.

The Doctors’ Association U.K. encourage you to share your #maskup photos on social media – follow us on Twitter @theDA_UK and Instagram @thedoctorsassociationuk

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Figures released by NHS England last week showed that one in six intensive-care patients is an unvaccinated pregnant woman – highlighting the bleak consequences of not getting jabbed. I’m a GP, and at the height of the second wave of the pandemic, I had the Covid-19 vaccine at 29 weeks pregnant.

But let’s not pretend this is an easy decision.

At first, despite being all for a vaccination, I was very undecided about rolling up my sleeve for something so new while pregnant. When UK GPs rolled out the vaccination programme last winter, initial guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) was that pregnant women weren’t to be given the vaccine – so I accepted that I wouldn’t be getting it. As the evidence built up, guidance was updated, and pregnant women at risk of exposure were able to have it. I realised I did want that protection for myself and for my family.

An estimated 60,000 lives have been saved – 52,600 hospital admissions avoided and 22 million Covid-19 infections prevented by coronavirus vaccines – the majority of these delivered by GPs, alongside their routine surgeries. Since April 2021, all pregnant women have been offered the vaccine in the same way as the rest of the population, as no specific safety concerns related to expectant mothers having the jab have been found.

Pregnant women have the flu and whooping cough vaccines safely every year – often without a second thought. In pregnancy, there is very little safety data for any medications and for something as new as the Covid-19 vaccine, there is clearly no long-term data available.

The science of vaccines has been understood for some time, however, and there’s no scientific reason it will affect the mother and baby and no evidence it can affect fertility or cause miscarriage. What made the decision for me was the fact that documented side effects from vaccines are so rare, but there is an abundance of evidence that being infected with Covid during pregnancy is much more dangerous.

The risk of blood clots with the AstraZeneca vaccine was well publicised, but this risk is more than ten times higher if you catch Covid-19. For me, the risk of either ending up on an intensive-care unit while pregnant, having a premature birth, or worse, a stillbirth, or having a debilitating condition like long Covid as a new mum clearly outweighed the minimal risks of having a new vaccine.

As another long winter approaches, and the impacts of the pandemic make it harder to access care, pregnant women are a vulnerable group who need to be prioritised for vaccination.

Campaign group Pregnant then Screwed showed high rates of vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women this summer, due to mixed messages and misinformation on social media. Discussions around vaccination can be heated and although the jab is recommended to prevent against the known risks of this disease, it is an individual decision. The resources below can help you with your decision, or you can speak to a trusted source such as your GP – this would be perfect for a telephone consultation.

I’m grateful I was able to get protected so early in the vaccine roll-out due to being a healthcare worker. The fact that it is now widely available to all pregnant women shows that it works. Colleagues working in intensive care are reporting Covid deaths among younger, unvaccinated people. This is a tragedy. Choosing to get vaccinated is not an easy decision, but it is the right one.

I urge you to weigh up the evidence and choose to protect yourself if you are pregnant this winter – not only against influenza and whooping cough, but please, please roll up your sleeve for the coronavirus jab too.

Ellen Welch is a GP and Editorial Lead with the Doctors’ Association UK and is donating the fee for this piece to Pregnant then Screwed.

Useful resources:

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists 

How the Covid vaccine works, NHS

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Last Friday, 825 patients out of 3,480 patients who were in intensive care beds in England had COVID.

It’s a stark warning. The latest figures show the majority of admissions – 75 per cent – are unvaccinated.

I signed up to the NHS to serve the public – and the strain on the health service’s workforce and the public are huge. For every unvaccinated person with Covid in intensive care there’s someone else who may well be struggling to get access to a life-saving bed.

Recently, I had to plead to get a young man whose health had deteriorated back into the Intensive Therapy Unit. I knew at the time I asked there were no beds – literally there was ‘no room at the inn’. I had to go to ITU to look at one of my most trusted colleagues in the eye to beg and plead my patient’s case.

We all loathe those conversations. It may mean another ventilated patient being moved to another hospital miles away, or, as has happened previously, closing an entire operating theatre to ventilate a patient. That in itself means another patient could be delayed life-saving surgery.

These kinds of decisions are being made every day. The stresses on all concerned, staff, patients and families are excruciating. That day, my patient was lucky and a bed was found. But will we be tomorrow?

This has been this way for months. It’s depressing as the vaccines have saved literally thousands of lives, yet some still won’t see sense and take it. Even now as scientists champion the new, life-saving booster program, there are still those who refuse to even get a single dose.  

As a society, the only aspect we seem to have become fully immune to is the discussion of the data. More than 1000 people continue to die of Covid every week. If two big jumbo jets crashed every seven days, would there be significantly more national outrage?

Although more than 46 million of us –  80 per cent – have had both doses, that still means many millions have still not had a first jab in the UK. It’s likely you may know someone who’s either not vaccinated or has hesitated to get the jab.

The German health minister, Jen Spahn, said last week that by the end of this winter pretty much ‘everyone will have been vaccinated, cured or dead’, which was spot on.

Although there are entirely understandable anxieties around Omicron regarding it’s transmissibility and the potential for ‘vaccine escape’, the biggest risk is that we dither and delay.

At the Doctors’ Association we welcome the planned expansion of the Covid vaccination booster programme, although we share the concerns of many regarding delivering vaccinations to 13 million more people is a huge challenge with a limited workforce.

What is really depressing is how the success of the vaccination programme and the knowledge that wearing a mask helps protect gets twisted by conspiracy theorists and even some politicians. This, of course, increases hesitancy. This week the former government minister, Desmond Swayne told right-wing Talk Radio that ‘I’m exempt from wearing a mask due to my genetic predisposition to liberty’. It’s this kind of ignorance and arrogance that is so unhelpful. 

And while vaccination does reduce the risk of serious illness – it does not remove it completely, which perhaps explains such tragedies as Irfan Halim, the 45-year-old surgeon from Swindon who died of Covid despite having been double-jabbed some six months earlier. He was only days away from being offered a booster vaccine.

The vaccines have been amazing, but, like a seatbelt or obeying the speed limit, they aren’t perfect. Wearing a seatbelt and keeping to the speed limit does not remove your risk of dying in a car crash – but they both hugely help your likelihood of survival. 

So ignore the idiots, mask up and get jabbed today. 

Dr David Nicholl is a consultant neurologist based in Birmingham and a committee member of the Doctors’ Association UK which has a #MaskUp campaign

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The frenzied news that a new ‘worst ever’ strain of Covid has been found should come as no surprise to anyone.

Public Health England (PHE) and health authorities around the world are continuously monitoring and checking samples of Covid to look for changes to the type of infections we’re getting. So this is not the only variant on the watch list. There are 14 others of concern that PHE is investigating.

On the whole, we should be pleased that this strain – known as Omicron – has been picked up. This means that the monitoring is working and enables scientists to examine changes in the virus in far more detail.

So why is this variant in the spotlight? Scientists noticed that the Omicron protein spikes on its particles are different to those on other Covid strains. And the vaccination identifies the virus using these particles. So what we don’t know yet is whether the jab will be able to identify this new variant because of the mutations in the protein spikes.

In the UK, Covid cases are limited by the vaccination rollout. The jab reduces the chances of catching and spreading the virus, along with helping the body to fight it off. People who get the virus are less unwell, and not as likely to need hospital admission or require intensive care.

If this new variant is immune to the vaccination, then we risk ending up in a situation like last winter where cases soar exponentially and hospitals and intensive care units will struggle to care for the number of Covid patients.

We’re currently offering flu jabs to people who are more likely to be seriously unwell if they catch it, in preparation for ‘flu season’ – which is January to March. Viruses such as flu, Covid and colds are more likely to spread in the winter months because people meet inside more and are closer together.

Currently, we’ve yet to see a case of this new variant in the UK, but we need to be aware of it and remember that this pandemic is far from over.

Thankfully, we have the advantage of a mostly vaccinated population that protects us from most strains of Covid. Added to that, manufacturers are already seeing if they can make alterations to the vaccination, if necessary, to ensure it protects us from this new strain.

So, what can we do in the meantime to protect ourselves?

We can help reduce the spread and the chances of catching it by following the simple steps we all got so used to last winter. Frequent hand washing and avoid touching your face and mask when out and about. We know wearing a mask or face covering reduces the chances of passing on and catching Covid, so doing this protects you and others. But it really is essential to make sure it completely covers your nose and mouth and fits well on your face, with no gaps around the side or top.

The last 20 months have been all about social distancing. If we start to think about this again, we can help slow down the spread – along with other viral infections such as flu and cold. And we should all make sure that indoor spaces are well ventilated to increase airflow to reduce the amount of Covid in the air.

It’s hard to make people follow these measures, however, when we see politicians crowded together in parliament, not wearing masks.

Lastly, there are lots of viruses that cause temperatures and coughs, but the only way to be sure it’s not Covid, is to book a test. There needs to be far more publicity around the use of the lateral flow tests (LFT), which are not as sensitive at detecting Covid as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. But the LFT is much easier – you can take it at home and get result in 20 minutes. It’s understandable that people are reluctant to go online, book a PCR test, drive to the site, then isolate at home while they wait for the results. But LFT miss a third of Covid cases, so it is really important to book a PCR test if you have symptoms that could be caused by Covid. The PCR test is much more accurate at detecting Covid, even if it does take longer to get the result.

Using all the above measures are proven to reduce Covid levels. And until we know if the vaccination will protect us again this new ‘worst ever’ strain, we ALL need to do them again. 

Dr Rosie Shire is a GP and member of the Doctors’ Association UK GP Committee.

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