Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said up to 250 teams of combat medics could be made available to help deliver the Covid-19 vaccine rollout across the country.
Speaking to Times Radio, Mr Wallace said: “ We’ve already put 133 (army medics) into the overall vaccine taskforce but I’ve also got plans for up to 250 teams of mobile, medically-trained personnel who could go out and administer the vaccine around the country.
“That would be over 100,000 a day they could potentially deliver if that is requested by the NHS – and we are planning to grow that if possible.”
Mr Wallace said most military doctors are already working in the NHS, but hundreds of combat medics are available to help with the Covid-19 response.
“What people need to understand is that a lot of our clinicians in the armed forces are also clinicians in the NHS, so they are often military reservists.
“It’s not quite as easy as just taking a whole load of people, who, let’s say, might be anaesthetists in the armed forces, and just putting them in the NHS.
“You’ll probably find they are already working in the NHS as a reserve.”
Mr Wallace said: “On combat medics, we train quite a lot of people to be combat medics supporting frontline units etc.
“They can deliver injections and those are the people we would make available to increase delivery of this vaccine as the vaccine stocks come online.”
