A top Tory has told how Covid would have left him in “big trouble” and “probably” on a ventilator if he hadn’t got the vaccine.
Nadhim Zahawi, who was until recently the Vaccines Minister, urged Brits to get their jabs after he was laid low recently despite having both doses and a booster.
The Education Secretary told Sky News’ Kay Burley: "I think, without the vaccine and the booster, I'd have had it even worse, my doctor said, because it's your physiology.
"It's your body's reaction to Covid that will determine how severe or asymptomatic you might be.”
He added “by day four or five it got into my chest and started really affecting my breathing," as his temperature hit 39.5C.
Mr Zahawi said his doctor suggested he might have to be put on steroids “or something heavier”, telling him: "If you hadn't had the vaccine and the booster, I guarantee you you would be in hospital and probably intubated."
He urged viewers: "Get your vaccine and get your booster... the offer is evergreen from the NHS.
"This thing is not like a cold.
"Certainly I would have been in big trouble, according to my doctor."
He said Prime Minister Boris Johnson will set out plans for "living with Covid" on February 21, and if the data continues in "the direction it's moving in at the moment" restrictions could be lifted on February 24.
Mr Zahawi said the Government will be led by the data when it comes to ending the need to self-isolate.
But Boris Johnson has already said he intends to end self-isolation laws on February 24, even for people who test positive.
Meanwhile the schools chief revealed he met with the exams regulator to discuss reports of private schools using grading arrangements in 2021 as an "excuse" to boost their proportion of top A-level grades.
A report from the Sunday Times found one school saw its proportion of A*s at A-level jump from 33% to 90% in 2021, when teacher-assessed grades were awarded following the cancellation of full public exams.
Mr Zahawi told Sky News he had met with the exams regulator Ofqual this week, after a viewer asked why private schools had used the system as an "excuse" for increasing their numbers of top grades.
The minister said: "Every allegation is investigated by the exam boards and all the records [of teacher assessment] have been kept... so if there are any new allegations they will investigate them as well.
"They also reassured me that actually when you look at whether it's independent schools or academies, the children who were expected to get high grades, A-grades, actually achieved those."
He said every headteacher had to sign "really stringent" declarations that they had followed grading arrangements properly.
Mr Zahawi added that grade inflation is "why I want to go back to exams", and while there "is no perfect system" the "best system" is exams.
He said advance information on topics covered in the 2022 exams released by Ofqual on Monday, and the grading arrangements for this year - with pupils marked between 2021 and 2019 levels - will help mitigate the impact of Covid on pupils' results.
Asked why private schools have charitable status, Mr Zahawi said he wants to see fee-paying schools do "much more to open up to children from disadvantaged backgrounds".
He suggested private schools could help run multi-academy trusts.
"It's also important that they play their part... can we get our independent schools to join us on what the evidence suggests is the best way forward, which is a family of schools that are well-managed, tightly managed, really well-supported in a multi-academy trust that's high-performing - we know the evidence suggests that delivers the best outcome for every child."
Mr Zahawi also said he will ask the Treasury for more money if pupils do not appear to have caught up on lost learning by the end of the Parliament, and added that he is writing to parents to urge they and their children take up tutoring.
He urged a viewer who said their GCSE-age child had received no catch-up tutoring under the Government's flagship scheme to "get in contact with your school".
He added: "Every school has the opportunity to take up the tutoring programme... the first term of this year we have done as many tutoring hours as the whole of last year."
He said reports by the Times Educational Supplement that the programme is only meeting 8% of its target "only looked at one" of the three pillars of the tutoring programme, with school-led tutoring "the most successful".
