Hawick woman raises more than £5,000 for Covax charity

An ex Hawick Cornet’s Lass is inspiring Borderers to help supply Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries.
Ruth Murray, who has started a fundraiser to help people in poorer countries receive a Covid-19 vaccination.Ruth Murray, who has started a fundraiser to help people in poorer countries receive a Covid-19 vaccination.
Ruth Murray, who has started a fundraiser to help people in poorer countries receive a Covid-19 vaccination.

Ruth Murray just turned 70 last month, and she says that when she received her first vaccine jab, she considered herself incredibly lucky, given the number of people around the world who have little or no chance of being vaccinated any time soon.

The retired maths teacher, who taught at Hawick High School and Galashiels Academy during her career, told us: “I was so grateful that I had received a free vaccine, so decided I wanted to donate the cost of it so someone else could have theirs.”

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She asked her son Euan for advice, who said the charity Covax – which supplies vaccines to less affluent countries such as Ghana – would be a good way to do it, and advised her to set up a Just Giving page so others could do the same.

Ruth – who was Cornet’s Lass in 1972 to her future husband Philip – set a primary target of £500, but has since blown that out of the water.

She said: “Initially I hoped to raise £210 as I had recently turned 70 and £210 would buy 70 Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccines. However my family pointed out we get two vaccines so £420 was my target.

“We rounded it up to £500 and launched the site last Wednesday morning. We hit the target by mid-afternoon and we had tripled the amount by the end of the first day. By Sunday night, we had raised almost seven times our initial target."

It’s now more than 10 times the initial amount, with £5,295 raised, and a new target of £7,000 has been set.

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