In this new Covid-19 world flu vaccinations may be even more important than usual.

The flu jab is offered free on the NHS to people who are at risk.

You should have the vaccine if you:

• are 65 or over
• are pregnant
• have certain medical conditions
• are living in a residential care home or similar facility
• receive a carer's allowance, or you're the main carer for a person whose welfare may be at risk if you fall ill
• live with someone who's at high risk of coronavirus (on the NHS shielded patient list) or you expect to be with them on most days over winter.

According to the NHS the flu vaccine may be given to those aged 50-64 later in the year, but at-risk adults aged 18-64 can be vaccinated from October.

Vaccinations are available at all of our local chemists and also through our GP surgeries.

Newbury Street Practice have booked several venues in the local area for their flu clinics and patients will be getting letters inviting them to a 30 minutes slot at a stated venue. 

The locations are Snells Hall in East Hendred, Grove Old Mill Hall, Stanford in the Vale Village Hall, Hanney Village Hall and Letcombe Regis Village Hall. There is no venue in Wantage. There will be catch up clinics at the Surgery.

Church Street Practice are doing vaccinations at the surgery and would prefer it if you could book online but you can also ring the surgery to make an appointment.

There is no vaccination available yet for Covid-19 but we hope that one will be available soon.

Getting Covid tests may be harder than getting a flu jab.

It can be very difficult to book a test locally, and people are being offered tests miles away.  We have heard of one person travelling to Cardiff for a test.

It may be worth persevering online and keep checkinging the page in order to get offered a local testing site. We understand that the website is updated every hour.

The most local testing sites are in Didcot, Oxford and Newbury. No testing is done at the Health Centre.

New information from the COVID Symptom Study suggests that most people who have Covid have severe headaches and tiredness in the first week so if you don’t have these symptoms you probably don’t have it.

The Government advice is not to request a test if you don’t have symptoms.