Will Queen break silence after bridesmaid’s jab?
WHEN panic surrounded the polio vaccine in the 1950s, the Queen helped turn public opinion by confirming Prince Charles and Princess Anne would get the jab.
Now, however, the Palace refuses to say if Her Majesty or Prince Philip have been given the Covid vaccine, insisting that it’s a ‘private’ matter. But some of the Queen’s confidantes take a different view.
This week, one of her two surviving bridesmaids, Lady Pamela Hicks, was inoculated. Lord Mountbatten’s 91-year-old daughter made clear that she wanted the news to be made public — and even allowed this photograph of her being given the jab to be published. Her daughter, India Hicks, who i s Prince Charles’s godchild and was a bridesmaid when he married Lady Diana Spencer, says: ‘ My mother received the vaccine, from her local doctor, in the local village, all via the NHS.
‘I asked her if I could post this image, because it gives me a sense of hope.
‘She absolutely agreed. We all need a sliver of hope right now, especially for everyone tightly locked down again in England.
‘As my mother often quotes, “Face the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.” ’
At the ages of 94 and 99, the Queen and Philip would be expected to have been inoculated by now.
Hundreds of thousands of younger people have already received the jab. Prince Charles said he was ‘way down the list’ when he and the Duchess of Cornwall spoke to NHS staff administering the vaccines during a morale-boosting visit in Gloucestershire last month.
The Palace’s decision to make public the polio jabs for Charles and Anne — then aged eight and six — is said to have played a crucial role in dampening down fears over the vaccinations.