I applaud your coverage of the long Covid-19 malaise and the dire effect on Paul Spriggins with all his many health problems.

I also agree with your opinion column that so many men and women will be suffering and need urgent help to deal with their symptoms and they should flag these up as a matter or urgency.

I was fortunate to have my second jab recently but as has been reported, felt the impact for a couple of days. But that is truly insignificant in contrast to the people who caught Covid-19 last year and are still languishing in that ghastly hinterland of feeling so unwell and absolutely helpless.

So it is vital that they are given the assistance they so desperately need and not just struggle on. To feel tired and headachy temporarily after receiving a life saving vaccine is a stroll in the park, compared to these poor people.

But it is concerning too that as life is beginning to return to an albeit “new normal” Covid-19 amnesia might be setting in that we all return to our somewhat modified lives and forget all that has happened in the last year or so.

Some would say don’t dwell on the past and look forward but I would counter that with, you need to remember and be aware of all the deaths and infections which are still happening especially now in India.

It can almost feel like déjà vu watching those ghastly scenes of very sick people crowding hospitals and remembering Wuhan where we in the west really became aware of this dire virus.

So we have to be vigilant that the scenes from India are not parked in our brain as life going on somewhere else. Because if this so dangerous virus has taught us anything, this has been a worldwide contagion and one we should never underestimate or forget or indeed the countless people that have died will have died for nothing.

If we do not learn the lessons, which should carry on not regardless but with compassion and thoughtfulness for all our fellow human beings especially the ones who are still on that unrelenting and still unknowable path of long Covid-19.

Judith A Daniels,

Winifred Road, Cobholm.