Dear Santa, give us the strength to get jabbed

Have you written your festive wishlist for Father Christmas yet? We have and it’s a bit different this year. This is how it goes: Spend time with only the people who are most important to you

Wear a mask

Wash hands

Slow the spread of omicron Get your first two jabs

Now get fully vaccinated with your booster

All right, it’s not ours but we are proud to have cribbed it from QA’s medical director Dr John Knighton.

Today he is imploring people to help slow the spread of Covid ‘by changing our behaviour’ by sticking to the items on his list.

Every item on that list is important but perhaps none more so than the final two.

Please get jabbed. Make sure you have all three of them. And if more come along, have those too.

Our main story today reports on the record number of vaccinations pricked into people at St James’ Hospital, Milton – 1,550 on Thursday.

By coincidence our review of the year has moved to February when the headline was, like today, about the only subject people were talking about: ‘Vaccines herald the start of roadmap out of lockdown’.

And they did. We thought we were beginning to climb into the sunlit uplands of a post-coronavirus world.

And then came omicron and we are back to begging people to get jabbed, if not for their own sakes then for those of their friends and family and any poor unsuspecting soul they might bump into and breathe over.

Almost 30 per cent of those eligible in Portsmouth have not had both jabs, let alone a booster. That’s disturbing. It’s sad because some of those who have not had their jabs are occupying hospital beds needed by others.

For a year we have urged everyone to Grab a Jab, or three. If you haven’t, please reconsider.