LONDON, Jan 7, Reuters - Britain's Ministry of Defence said on Friday that it had begun the deployment of the military to support hospitals with staff shortages and extreme pressures due to record COVID 19 cases in the country.
The government said 200 Armed Forces personnel had been made available to support the National Health Service NHS in London for the next three weeks.
Britain has seen a surge in coronavirus cases due to the Omicron variant, and has reported over 150,000 new cases each day over the last week.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that England can withstand the surge without new restrictions thanks to the vaccination and the lower severity of the variant, but he has warned of a challenging few weeks as people self-isolate.
The government has also deployed armed forces to assist with COVID 19 testing and vaccination programmes.
Health minister Sajid Javid said that they are stepping up to help NHS workers who are working round the clock in the capital, helping the health service through this difficult winter period when the need is greatest.
Britain has reported more than 150,000 deaths from COVID 19, and two years into a pandemic, its state-run health service was already facing a morale and staffing crisis, even before the recent surge in Omicron, a lawmaker report released on Thursday said.
The staffing crisis could hamper efforts to catch up with record waiting lists for elective treatment caused by COVID 19 disruption, according to the report.
Chaand Nagpaul, Chair of the Council of the British Medical Association, said there were unprecedented levels of staff absence in the NHS.
The government has resorted to army help in London, but let's not forget that we actually have a national problem at the moment, Nagpaul told Sky News.
This is a national problem and we've never seen this level of staff absence before.