The new president of the University and College Union, herself suffering from long Covid, says staff are increasingly angry, as branches ballot their members

One weekend in May, when Vicky Blake, the new president of the University and College Union, was supposed to be helping her father with some decorating, she realised she could not lift her arms. “I felt I’d dissolved from the inside out and there was just no power left in my body,” she says.

It was the start of months of what her doctor thinks is long Covid, with symptoms including “brain fog” and total exhaustion. But with so many of her members terrified or angry about being expected to teach face to face on campuses where Covid is spreading, and her union fighting to force institutions to move courses online, this has not been a time to slacken off.

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