Over 5,000 Armed Forces personnel are currently deployed to support the response to the Coronavirus across the UK, working on 70 different tasks ranging from schools testing to the rollout of vaccines, according to the Ministry of Defence.

According to the Ministry of Defence, more military personnel are being deployed to support community testing in:

  • Manchester – 800 personnel providing community testing support to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority
  • Kent – 390 personnel will support community testing
  • Swadlincote, Derbyshire – 130 personnel to establish and operate four lateral flow testing sites
  • Kirklees, Yorkshire – 75 personnel to establish and operate four lateral flow testing sites
  • Lancashire – 420 personnel to support asymptomatic testing

“In Manchester today (4 January) another large scale task starts, with 800 personnel deploying from nine regiments across the British Army at the request of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), through the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). These personnel will prepare to work across all ten local authority areas of Greater Manchester to carry out targeted asymptomatic testing of specific populations that may be at a higher risk of infection including social care staff, key workers, public facing occupations such as bus drivers, and those in high risk environments such care homes and shared accommodation for the homeless. The task builds on lessons from previous asymptomatic community testing in Liverpool, Lancashire, Merthyr Tydfil, Medway, and Kirklees.

In addition to community testing, military personnel remain on-task testing hauliers in Dover and helping to establish ten new testing sites to improve the flow of traffic across the Channel. As of today, 515 personnel are on task in Kent and elsewhere providing testing to hauliers. 1,500 Armed Forces personnel have also been provided to support schools testing, with local response teams providing virtual support and phone advice to institutions. Personnel also on standby to deploy at short notice to provide in-person support. Testing will continue as planned with two rapid Lateral Flow Tests available to all secondary school and college students and staff at the start of term to identify asymptomatic cases, break chains of transmission and beat the virus.”

Image Crown Copyright 2020.

According to another news release from the Ministry of Defence:

“The MOD has deployed 10 military planners to assist the Vaccine Task Force, with over 150 personnel deployed across the UK to support organisational and logistical components of the Deployment Programme. Two separate military planners are seconded to support the Vaccine Task Force Director. Additionally, 20 personnel are assisting with regional vaccine planning, end-to-end logistics and delivery. From 11th January a Vaccine Quick Reaction Force is being established, with their training for the role beginning today. This will initially be 21 teams of six personnel assigned to the seven NHS England regions, able to provide surge support to the vaccine roll-out if required by local health authorities.

In Wales, 90 service personnel are deployed to support Health Boards in rapidly establishing and operating vaccination centres. For the first-time trained defence medics will also support the administering of the vaccine. Ninety-four military personnel, including medics and drivers, have embedded with the Welsh Ambulance NHS Trust to support them by driving Ambulances.

In Scotland, military planners are supporting the testing and vaccine programmes. Earlier during the pandemic Armed Forces personnel supported healthcare professionals to deliver testing at Glasgow Airport, and RAF Puma helicopters were deployed to Kinloss Barracks in Moray to provide emergency assistance to NHS boards and trusts across Scotland.

In Northern Ireland the Defence Estate is being loaned to the PSNI for their use and the Armed Forces have placed medevac capabilities on standby for Covid-19 patients when needed.”

Image Crown Copyright.
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

5 COMMENTS

  1. The national effort steps up another gear, which to be honest is hard to do when your in the middle of a marathon and everyone is tiring out, fingers crossed we can get to a steady state and get a breather in the summer months.

    • Hi Jonathan,

      A relative of mine is currently in hospital with Covid. She has an underlying medical condition so it seems she is in trouble. We are all worried for her. This really bring it home, hard.

      You are right to say the summer is likely to be a breather. Different types of Coronavirus cause flu and cold symptoms so I don’t think we will ever get rid of Covid. We need to think about a new normal which may include annual mass vaccinations a la flu jabs!

      I am hoping that after all of this we will learn to appreciation key workers far more than we have done to date. Doctors, nurese, porters, the services (military and civil), refuse and recycling, security workers (during the first lockdown they had one of the highest infection rates apparently!), shop workers, and many more who have kept us safe, feed and watered in these difficult times.

      The Black Death led to the Renaissance. I am hoping for a similar kind of change, may be not as dramatic, but one that brings us back together and appreciate those who really make our society work and appreciate the world around around us.

      It is the thought that a better future may emergy out of all of this pain that keeps me going – frankily I’m not sure I want to go back to the way it was. I think we can and should do better. I hope so anyway.

      Cheers CR

      • Hi CR, my thoughts are with everyone suffering or has family members suffering from this terrible disease and I hope you get good news.

        Unfortunately what you have said is very much true, but our leaders are not yet willing to either Face the truth or maybe start to be honest with the public.

        This disease is going to force a massive change in our society and we will never be free of it.

        Key points:

        1) while it is circulating in numbers around the world it will mutate its way around vaccines.
        2) we have no way of vaccinating 7 billion people in a short time frame so point one will aways occurs on a regular basis. Africa is a particular weakness as it has a massive population of immune compromised individuals ( the best Petra dish for a virus to bread lots of generations) and no infrastructure to immunise the whole population.
        3) we are not seeing a long term immune response from people who have had sars Cov-2 so it’s likely there will be a need for booster vaccinations even without mutation.
        4) the basic character of sars Cov-2 ( high RO, 1% mortality, 10% hospitalisation rate, high rate of long term harm and disability) means you can’t just live with it.

        This all mean we are going to have to:

        1) massive recapitalisation of the NHS, allowing it to undertake a massive nation wide new vaccination programme every year or so ( providing 100 million vaccination slots every year is a massive undertaking and will require new facilities and hundreds of thousands of extra trained staff.
        2) repurpose and recapitalisation of our acute hospital care, the nhs has lost around 20% of its bed spaces as we adjust to covid ( we have removed beds from almost all bays nationwide) even with this extra spacing between beds we are failing to prevent outbreaks. We will also see every year a whole new cochort of patients being admitted, we struggle with flu every year, covid is 10 times more impactful. The NHS will have to massively increase is respiratory bed numbers, cut a lot of elective care in winter ( working harder in summer) and figure out how we can keep patients safe in hospitals. This is going to cost untold billions..
        3) wider society, we will all have to be a bit more spaced out, that’s a complete change in public transport and mass entertainment. Towns and cities will need to be visioned.
        4) support to the third world, we can now see that what comes out of one county can lay the world out. As noted Africa is at present going to be a breeding ground for new variants. The west needs a rethink on supporting world health as what happens in Africa or poor nations anywhere can and will mean death in the west.

        You are right all the great diseases and pandemics have alway change human society and history. The cities we live in today with Sewers plumbing, clean water, parks, health care systems are all because disease is the great scourge of humanity and most of our greatest endeavour has been sculpted by this fact.

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