I'm a doctor who knows Covid is usually little worse than a cold - but I'd ... trends now
Have you heard the good news about Covid jabs? It's been reported that from April 1 anyone over the age of 12 will be able to pay to have one at Boots.
At £98.95, they're not cheap, but finally people in this country will be able to get the booster privately, as they can already in the US.
Actually, I don't think in principle any of us should have to pay for jabs against widespread disease such as Covid.
But for its own reasons, the Government has decided to limit who the jab is offered to - and if you're one of the millions of people left out of the current Covid vaccination programme, then £100, in my view, is an investment that you should make if you can afford to.
I've had the jab for free as a frontline NHS worker, but otherwise I'd be logging on to the Boots website and booking the vaccine as soon as possible.
Over the top? You might think so, given that Covid is becoming less virulent, and the initial reasons for getting the vaccine were to stop acute illness.
It's the single dose Pfizer jab that's on offer, and the evidence shows that this is the most effective vaccine in protecting you against what really worries me as a doctor: long Covid
And the fact is, for healthy people a Covid infection isn't going to be much worse than a cold. So that's a lot of money to spend to stop 'just a cold'.
But I don't think getting the vaccine is about the actual illness and symptoms - it's the single dose Pfizer jab that's on offer, and the evidence shows that this is the most effective vaccine in protecting you against what really worries me as a doctor: long Covid.
That's why I think anyone who hasn't had the Covid booster this year should consider paying for it. And, just to be clear, I do not own shares nor work for Pfizer (or Boots); my only vested interest is in seeing fewer patients come to my A&E department with symptoms.
Like any vaccine, the Covid jab does have potential side effects. And it's clearly not guaranteed to stop infection entirely – no vaccine can.
If the pandemic hadn't happened, of course I wouldn't want the vaccine, especially one developed so quickly and without the reassurance of the long-term safety data that there is for other more established vaccines.
But the fact is that, post-pandemic, Covid will continue to circulate in the community and continue to infect us all at regular intervals for many years to come.
And looking at the data from independent studies, this has shown that the benefits massively outweigh the potential harms, not just in reducing your chances of getting Covid, and the severity of the infection, but crucially, in reducing your chances of developing long Covid.
There is no doubt that long Covid is a genuine health problem, and I've seen too many previously healthy people floored by it to risk getting it myself. Its list of awful symptoms range from brain fog to heart problems, to fatigue and repeated infections. It's very much not 'all in the mind' as some suggest – people with long Covid can experience a reduction
