Mohamed Salah Says You Should Get Vaccinated Against Covid-19

Mohamed Salah has 20 goals and nine assists already in just 21 games this season, an impressive return by even the loftiest standards. The Liverpool and Egypt superstar has also been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Nearly two years into a global pandemic, that’s a fact that seems as though it shouldn’t be news.

Yet in a world where far too many—including, disappointingly, some high-profile athletes—have shown themselves to be recklessly vaccine resistant, endangering not just themselves but their friends, family, and community, it is.

“Yes, I have,” Salah responded when asked on Egyptian television this week if he’d been vaccinated. He went on to explain that he got vaccinated because it’s what doctors—experts in the medical field just as he’s an expert on the pitch—believe is the right choice.

“They’re doctors and people of medicine who have been working and studying for years,” he explained. “If I said they were wrong, then I’d be like someone in the street [telling me] pass this ball here instead.

“Doctors have said [to get it] and the World Health Organisation said so, so we need to follow them. That’s my point of view.”

Salah also took time to address the fact that he contracted the virus last year, saying he got a mild case and acknowledging the circumstances around it and that his teammates commented on it but not going into much detail beyond that.

“They commented on me getting it at a wedding party,” Salah said when asked about contracting Covid-19 at his brother’s wedding last year. “But they knew it was my brother’s wedding and he won’t get married every day—or I hope he won’t get married every day!”

“They didn’t go beyond that. These things were said in the locker room so I can’t talk about them, but it was not a disaster.”