The Return of Covid in the UK

The Return of Covid in the UK

I could feel it before anyone said a word. That quiet shift in the country, the same uneasy breath people took years ago when Covid first arrived. And now it is circling again in the UK, rising in numbers, slipping back into headlines, making its way through towns the way cold air moves through open doors.

People talk about it differently this time. Not with panic, not with rushing fear, but with a deep, tired caution. We have lived through it once, and we remember everything. The lockdowns, the empty streets, the silence. And the vaccines that came like a lifeline. Most people took them because they believed it was the only way out. For many, it was. For others, it brought a new fear.

I still remember when the news broke about the rare blood clots. The regulator said there might be a link, and they listed the numbers so plainly. Seventy-nine cases of the clotting with low platelets by the end of March that year, and nineteen people who died. Nineteen lives lost after doing what they thought was right.

People didn’t forget that. It stayed with them quietly, like a small bruise under the skin. Not everyone talked about it, but they remembered. They remembered the shock, the worry, the feeling of not knowing if they would be next. And now that Covid is moving through the country again, those old feelings are waking up.

And for me, it hits even harder, because I am still suffering after having Covid back in 2020. It never truly left me. Some days I feel stronger, and other days I feel like I am walking through mud. The tiredness, the breathlessness, the way my body never returned fully to how it was. Even now, five years on, it shakes me. So when I hear that Covid is back on its rounds, I feel that fear settle quietly in my chest. It has lived there since the day I first got sick. I do not show it all the time, but it is there. And I am frightened. Truly frightened. Because I know what it can do, and I know I cannot go through that again.

I hear the same softness in other people. Someone in a shop saying they are not sure about another jab. A man on the bus telling his friend he’ll wait and see this time. No anger in their voices, just uncertainty. A kind of gentle fear that comes from being hurt once before.

The government says the same things as last time. That the risk is small. That the virus itself is worse. That people should protect themselves. And maybe all that is true. But truth doesn’t always fall neatly into people’s hearts. Not when they have lived through something already, and not when they still feel the after-effects years later the way I do.

Walking through town, I see it in people’s eyes. A sort of quiet calculation, as if they are weighing up every choice. Do they trust the advice again, or do they step back and decide for themselves? It is not stubbornness. It is self-protection. People want honesty they can feel, not statistics thrown at them.

I stood by my window the other night, looking out at the streetlights glowing in the cold air, and I thought about how much changed in those first years. How we hoped the vaccines would put an end to it all, and how for millions they did. But the stories of those rare deaths, those nineteen families, shaped people more than any chart ever could. And my own lingering illness shapes me too. It reminds me daily that I am not the same person I was before 2020.

Now Covid is back on its rounds, and the UK feels different. Not panicked, just guarded. Not running, just watching. We are not the same country we were before. We are older in spirit, quieter in trust, and more careful about who we listen to. And some of us are simply trying to get through each day while still carrying the weight of the first time.

The return of the virus is one thing. The return of doubt is another.And this time, the real story is how people move through both, trying to protect themselves in a world that changed them once, and might try to change them again. Maybe this time it won’t be as deadly as the last please God 🙏