Unlike the US, Canada and Australia, the UK is only giving free boosters to some. But the cost of restricting them could be huge

Trust me, no one, even in public health or medicine, wants to talk or think about Covid-19. The trauma of those pandemic years is burnt into our minds. But, whether we want to deal with it or not, Covid-19 is still affecting all of us, and circulating at fairly high levels in Britain this month. While community surveys are no longer conducted by the Office for National Statistics to estimate overall cases, hospital data from England indicates that the weekly hospital admission rate for Covid-19 is at 4.64 for every 100,000 people, with the north-east region at 8.91.

These figures just cover people who are admitted to hospital and don’t reflect those suffering at home or attending GP clinics. While we were mainly fixated on death rates during the pandemic, the longer legacy concerns people who had and cleared the infection, but are still suffering – what is usually referred to as long Covid.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh