Covid is back and I'm proof - but our wretched PM has abandoned the vulnerable

I am writing from my sick bed, fluey and achy, with gushing eyes and nose, a croaking cough and an unbearably scratchy throat. My ears are throbbing an ungodly dance and I feel wrenched inside-out. I have Covid. Some friends came round on Saturday night to help celebrate the launch of my new book, Love, Freddie: The Secret Life and Love of Freddie Mercury. One of them messaged on Monday to warn that she had gone down with the virus. Come Wednesday, confirmed by a test, I had too. I've had to cancel important publicity and promotional engagements, though I'm still giving interviews via Zoom. Yesterday's talk with a Dutch journalist was interesting. He was glottal. I was snottal. Between us, bilingually, maybe we managed a little sense. Brazil today. But a bookshop talk and sold-out signing later have had to be cancelled.

My inconvenient news has mostly been met with annoyance. Covid fatigue rules. Even pharmacy sales assistants yawn with apathy. "Not much point in this," grumbled the man in the chemists to my friend who went to pick up the tests for me. "It's out there, it's with us," he scoffed as he rang up the £9.50 for a box of five. "It is weakened each time it's passed from someone to you to the next person. Panic over. Everybody needs to get a grip."

We do? Medical professionals are warning that the deadly virus is again on the rise. A virulent new strain was identified only this summer. Variant NB.1.8.1 has been confirmed by the UK Health Security Agency as having been detected here.

International data also indicates a concerning hike. In the US, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has called the question of a further pandemic "not an if, but a when".

When the SARS-Cov-2 virus arrived at the turn of the decade, it hit a world that was woefully ill-prepared. By August last year - even though many believe it has gone away and is 'no worse than regular flu' - it had, according to Oxfam, claimed 19.6 million lives.

The death toll, they add, is four times higher in poor countries. Global economic disruption compromised us all. We argued for yonks about vaccines, masks and school closures, and now everybody is bored with it.

But it hasn't gone away. I am poorly, wheezing, deteriorating proof. As are our hospitals. Last month, cases in hospital patients here soared by 31 per cent in just two weeks.

The UK is facing a new and dangerous wave of infections. Our wretched government, however, is no longer offering the jab to pensioners aged 65-74, nor to pregnant women, nor to those with chronic heart disease or liver disease.

This autumn, NHS vaccinations will be available only to the over -75s, care home residents and the immunosuppressed aged more than six months. I'd pay for a jab pronto if I were you. Then mind how you go.