Covid is on the march again so where is the public messaging from the Government? - Jayne Dowle

UKHSA also says that flu levels are up in England. Its analysis of the latest data from sentinel laboratories - based on samples collected from primary and secondary care - reveals a rise in influenza positivity from 2.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent in the space of a week.

Perhaps that’s why you’re feeling so rough. Talk about ghosts of Christmas past. Two years ago, in the light of rising cases – of Covid alone - we would likely have been facing the prospect of a festive lockdown.

So why the complete radio silence from Number 10? Unless I’m missing something major, no minister or government official has come forward to sound a single warning bell about the need to avoid human contact to prevent the spread of these two potentially-fatal respiratory infections.

As we know, flu and Covid share interchangeable and confusing symptoms, such as fatigue, muscle aches and loss of taste or smell. “It is increasingly difficult to distinguish the symptoms of flu and Covid,” says Paul Hunter, Professor of Health Protection at the University of East Anglia.

Last week, my 18-year-old daughter, Lizzie, was floored for five days by symptoms which could easily have been either Covid or flu. She managed to hunt down a Covid test in the back of a drawer, but it returned a negative result. Unable to swallow and with a raging temperature, by Thursday afternoon, she gave in and made an appointment with our local after-hours NHS service.

I drove her there as she was too ill to drive herself. As we approached the building, we were reminded of queuing to have our Covid vaccinations and it seemed like another life entirely.

Five minutes afterwards, she was back in the car; the doctor said it was a viral infection, advised rest and painkillers, and sent her on her way. Two days later Lizzie dragged herself back to her part-time job in retail (staff absence being very much frowned upon), possibly infecting every customer she served with whatever ‘virus’ she had contracted.

We were left wondering – what would have been the scenario in 2020 or 2021? Would she have been ushered into the medical facility by people in if not hazmat suits, then at least full face masks and gloves? Would she have been instructed to go into isolation? Would the rest of her family have been locked down too, relying on friends to drop us off food and supplies until the contagion passed?

I am the very last person to yearn for those times to return. My children lost their father in March 2021; he died of a terminal illness, with Covid on his death certificate. They couldn’t see him before he passed and said goodbye to him on his deathbed one terrible Sunday afternoon, via iPad.

At their dad’s socially-distanced funeral, I couldn’t even sit close enough to my own son and daughter to reach out and hold their hands. It was beyond awful, but this was just one of thousands of bereavements and funerals conducted in the same gut-wrenching way.

I feel angry, and I know I’m not definitely not alone in this, that a government - albeit then headed by a different Prime Minister - could have subjected millions of citizens to such extreme social distancing measures. And now, seemingly, the government has nothing to say when Covid (and flu) cases are on the rise, especially at a time of year when people travel across the country to visit family and friends and generations gather under the same roof.

Their shameful performance during those long, hard Covid lockdowns, revealed in all its gory detail during the recent enquiry, has left politicians and civil servants so risk-averse they are potentially putting us all at risk. What would happen should a full-blown pandemic descend?

Meanwhile, public health experts are urging all those eligible for Covid or flu jabs on the NHS to be vaccinated to protect themselves from developing serious illness should they contract flu or Covid.