Are You Making These Covid Mistakes?

You’re full of good intentions to fight the virus but you might be falling into bad habits or making faulty assumptions

WHAT a roller coaster our vaccine rollout process is turning out to be. Then it’s on, then it’s off, then it’s – well, who knows what it will be as more studies are done in the next few weeks to determine how effective vaccines are against the mutations of Covid-19.

Meanwhile, we have to do everything we can to keep safe against the virus that’s now claimed more than 2,3 million lives around the world.

Could we be doing more as individuals to curb transmission of coronavirus? A virologist, a psychologist and a public-health expert share their views on some of the mistakes we’re all still making.

FOCUSING ON WHAT’S ALLOWED RATHER THAN WHAT’S SAFE

Although we’re in lockdown level 3, there’s more scope for social contact. Such allowances are important for mental health and the economy, but that doesn’t mean they’re entirely safe.

A common problem is not connecting the dots between the people you see in one context and those you see in another.

“For instance, young people often feel they can mix freely with their peers because they know their peers aren’t at high risk,” says Lucy Yardley, professor of health psychology at the University of Bristol in England.

“Then they’ll go see their grandparents and be more careful with them – but not as care­ ful as they need to be, given that they’ve been mixing freely with their peers, who’ve been mixing freely with everybody.”

Even if young people avoid their grand­ parents but mix freely with their parents, their parents might then go see the grand­ parents.