Do I really have to worry about Covid again this Christmas?
Within reason, yes, says Dr Helen Salisbury, a GP, senior medical education fellow at Oxford University and member of the Independent Sage advisory group. “Some people still get very ill, especially the clinically vulnerable who have not responded to vaccines, and even if that’s not you, you might make someone else ill if you catch Covid and pass it on.”
But isn’t it just like a cold these days?
Mercifully, for many healthy people it is. But “even in this post-vaccination period and with so-called mild Omicron subvariants, an additional 750,000 have succumbed to long Covid and its associated disabilities during 2022”, says Salisbury, “and this is often in people who were fine after previous infections.”
OK then – what should I do?
The most important thing is to get up to date with your vaccines, according to Linda Bauld, a professor of public health at Edinburgh University and the chief social policy adviser to the Scottish government.
Being fully vaccinated won’t fully protect you from infection, but it significantly lowers the risk of illness, she says, adding that this applies equally for the flu jab.
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