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Jab is a "social duty"

Wednesday, 3 March 2021 12:37

By Ed Oldfield, local democracy reporter

Ed Oldfield's

Democracy reporter has had covid

As a local democracy reporter covering Torbay and Plymouth, I’ve been writing about Covid-19 since March 2020. But I’ve lived with it too, after testing positive in early January.

Now I’ve had the vaccination, as I’m on the clinically vulnerable list due to an inflammatory joint disease, which means taking immuno-suppressant medication. 

I’m writing about it because that’s what I do, and to explain what happens for anyone who is next in the queue. In the first stage of the vaccine roll-out, the priority groups of care home residents, healthcare workers, the over-70s and those required to shield, were offered a jab by mid-February.

The phase we are in now is those over 60 and people with underlying health conditions, followed by everyone over 50 by mid-April. Second doses have begun, with everyone vaccinated expected to receive the follow-up within 12 weeks.

I was invited for my jab by a text from my GP surgery on Friday. I clicked the link and in a quick and easy two-stage online process I was booked in at 1.20pm on Tuesday at the Riviera Centre in Torquay. It was a year and a day since the first coronavirus infections were confirmed in Devon, with cases identified in Torbay. 

The last time I was at the Riviera Centre was at the end of February 2020 to cover a budget meeting of Torbay Council. It was a very different scene when I arrived in the car park and was directed to a queue of around half a dozen people by a volunteer steward in a high-vis jacket and mask. After a couple of minutes outside, I made it through the doors and was offered a squirt of hand sanitizer. I reported to a desk where I was politely asked whether I had recently experienced any Covid symptoms. The answer was no, I explained I had tested positive in early January and recovered, and I was sent into another queue.

Standing a good two metres apart, we queued slowly forward into the main auditorium, where black and yellow social distancing marker arrows covered the floor. The vaccinations were being given at a row of desks down one side of the large hall, with numbered queues leading to each roped off bay. There was a hum of calm activity and people moved forward steadily, guided by friendly masked stewards at each stage. 

I was checked in at another desk and handed a numbered ticket. Another queue, and within minutes I was making my way forward to vaccination desk number one. I handed over my ticket and confirmed my details to a young man sitting behind a laptop. 

I had already taken off my jumper, and the woman in blue scrubs with the needle went through more questions, including any allergies, and whether I consented. I said yes, rolled up my T-shirt and the needle was pushed into the muscle on my right upper arm. It was not painful and over in seconds. Then I was then handed an information leaflet, warned about possible side-effects, and given a slip telling me I had just received the AstraZeneca vaccine. That was it, I was free to go, and after a short sit-down to catch my breath I was out via a fire exit into the fresh air, having joined more than 20 million people to receive their first vaccine dose.

A day later I woke up feeling hot and with a headache, but that has gone after taking paracetamol. Anyone who has had the vaccine is advised to follow the advice about side-effects in the leaflet provided.

As the leaflet says, the vaccine stimulates the body’s natural defences, called the immune system, and causes it to produce its own protection, called antibodies, against the virus. It adds: “This will help you to protect you against COVID-19 in the future. None of the ingredients in this vaccine can cause COVID-19.” 

I’m glad to have been vaccinated. Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve spoken to people who have worked on Covid wards, heard the stories from people who have lost loved ones, and seen the staggering toll of deaths mount month by month. My heart goes out to those who lost friends and relatives.

I see having the vaccine as a social duty. It will not only protect me and my family, but also others, and will help avoid adding to the pressure on the NHS. Although I’ve had Covid-19, I don’t know which variant it was. It is unknown how long the natural protection that follows will last, whether I can be reinfected, what that would mean for me transmitting the virus, and how new variants will behave. For all those reasons, it makes sense to have the vaccine, and play my part in curbing the spread.

My vaccination is the second time I have joined the official statistics, after testing positive for Covid-19 in the new year. It started with a feeling of absolute exhaustion, and a headache that just wouldn’t shift. No cough, no raised temperature, no loss of taste or smell. That came much later. 

It was over the Christmas holiday, and all of us in the household had similar symptoms. But the response from the testing hotline at the stage in early January was if you don’t have the recognised main symptoms, you shouldn’t get a test. It seems hard to understand now, but we weren’t sure it was actually Covid. Then one of my adult children tested positive when they went back to work. By this stage I had a slight cough, so I booked a test at the mobile centre in Lymington Road, Torquay, for the next day, Sunday, January 3. A day after that a text arrived – positive. I instantly felt worse. But even more worrying than that, was the dread that I might have infected someone else. I filled in the test and trace form, trying to remember where I had been in the previous few days. We had met elderly relatives outside at Exmouth Beach, socially distanced, as permitted under the Christmas lockdown rules. Thankfully they did not go on to develop the disease. 

We spent the next few days in a kind of limbo, legally prevented from leaving the house. I felt wiped out. My inflammatory joint disease flared up, then eased after a couple of days, and despite an episode of tightness in my chest, the breathing problems did not get worse. It was a worrying time, with a continual fear of getting ill enough to need hospital treatment. But after several more days my symptoms subsided into those of similar to flu, but stubbornly refused to shift. 

Riviera Centre is covid jab centre

We had contact and support by phone and email from the Torbay Council test and trace service, checking on how we were, and guiding us towards any help we might need. It was good to know that back-up was available, even though we had enough supplies to last our mini lockdown. 

A neighbour brought round a cake she had baked for us, a lovely gesture which really lifted my spirits, and I went back to working from home, as I’d already had two weeks off over Christmas and the new year. That was probably a mistake, as the low level symptoms of headache and fatigue carried on. After 10 days, I got a call telling me my isolation period was over. But I stayed inside for another week because I was still suffering from a big fall in energy levels, and still had symptoms. Around that time my sense of taste and smell disappeared. That lasted a couple of weeks, and has slowly returned. 

But a month on, the worst symptoms seemed to come back, and knocked me flat again for a few days. I’ve carried on working from home, and now three months since that positive test, I’m only just beginning to feel that my overall health is getting back to where it was before. 

As a journalist, I’ve spent more than 30 years as an observer, reporting the news. But Covid-19 changed all that as I went from reporting to becoming part of the pandemic story. 

I know my own experience has been nowhere near as bad as so many, those who have become seriously ill, lost loved ones, or whose lives have been changed by the toll on our mental health, the damage to the economy and education. But we have to hope that the strength and resilience shown by the people of the NHS, and all those who have kept the country going during our darkest times, will be what powers us through to recovery. The virus is expected to be with us for a long time to come. But the vaccination programme feels like a big step in the right direction.

 

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