Last month I posted two pieces about me and my son both testing positive for Covid, five days apart. We have recovered, as far as we can tell. Our symptoms were mild. Time will tell if we have lasting effects from the infection, but so far so good.

Until two days ago, my wife and daughter had continued to test negative, but now our daughter has succumbed too. She felt poorly at school on Friday and my wife brought her home before lunch-time. She took a Lateral Flow test which showed the faintest of lines next to the T, just like the last of the positive tests taken by my son. Yesterday her symptoms were far worse than my son or I experienced: alternating between feverish and shivering. She hasn’t been this unwell since she was a toddler, over ten years ago. I am happy to report that today she was feeling much better.

Having received three doses of vaccine, and a dose of the virus itself, I was hoping to be chock-full of antibodies, and to get maybe six months’ grace before any risk of reinfection, or until the next variant comes along. Recent reports suggest that reinfection rates may be much higher than we all thought. I wasn’t expecting to return to pre-lockdown behaviour, but I would have liked to ease up on the self-imposed restrictions we’ve been living with for the last 22 months, and to test less often. But we’ll continue to stick swabs up our noses multiple times a week. We have just scored another two boxes of Covid test kits (seven in each box). Last summer that would have lasted nearly a month but now it’s hardly a week’s worth.