Jo Whiley's sister Frances to get jab a month after having Covid

The radio DJ Jo Whiley’s sister is to receive her first Covid-19 vaccination, a month after contracting the disease and almost dying from it.

Whiley said she “couldn’t be happier” that her sister Frances, 53, who has a learning disability and diabetes, will receive her vaccine this weekend.

Frances ended up in hospital in February “fighting for her life” following a coronavirus outbreak at her Northamptonshire care home. Whiley said her family was asked to discuss palliative care for Frances as she battled the virus at Northampton general hospital.

After Frances recovered and left hospital, Whiley posted a video of her sister giving a thumbs up and a round of applause for the doctors and nurses who treated her.

“[The vaccine] has been a long time coming,” the BBC Radio 2 presenter said on her show on Thursday evening. “You have to wait a month after you have had Covid but it finally comes this weekend, so we could not be happier.”

Last month Whiley said she was living “a nightmare” after being offered a Covid vaccine before her sister, who has the rare genetic syndrome cri du chat.

Her invitation to be vaccinated came days after she got the call that her sister had contracted the disease.

She said at the time: “I would give up my vaccine in a heartbeat if I could for my sister and any of the residents in her house to have their vaccine … it does not feel right. She’s fighting for her life in hospital. It couldn’t be crueller.”

She said she didn’t know why she had been invited to get the jab, but it was possibly because she was deemed a carer for her sister.

It prompted Whiley to campaign for people with learning disabilities to be prioritised in the vaccination programme. “This happens so often – people with learning disabilities are neglected, they haven’t got a voice,” she said at the time.

People with diabetes and those with a “severe or profound” learning disability are in priority group six for the coronavirus vaccine, which includes the over-65s and people considered clinically vulnerable.

Nearly six out of every 10 people who died with coronavirus in England last year were disabled, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

For people with a diagnosed learning disability, the risk of death involving Covid is 3.7 times greater than for people without a learning disability.