Home   News   Article

Military praised for 'amazing work' during the Covid-19 crisis


By Scott Maclennan

Easier access to your trusted, local news. Subscribe to a digital package and support local news publishing.



Click here to sign up to our free newsletters!
Downing Street briefing.
Downing Street briefing.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has paid tribute to the British armed forces at the Downing Street briefing for their role providing a wide range of support to the UK’s battle with Covid-19.

He was joined by the chief medical officer Chris Whitty and the chief of the defence staff General Sir Nick Carter, which is the first time the UK’s most senior military officer has appeared at the briefing.

Mr Raab, who is deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson who is still recovering from Covid-19, said: “The sight of our armed forces working side-by-side with our brilliant NHS staff offers a calm reassurance that the task at hand and that we will come through this crisis.”

He said: “I think it's only fitting to pay tribute to the amazing work of our fantastic armed forces and the whole Minister of Defence led by defence secretary Ben Wallace,

“They have been there every step of the way, helping us to build the new NHS Nightingale hospitals to reinforce our critical care capacity, supporting our local resilience in delivering personal protective equipment where it is needed most and also helping deliver the mobile labs which are critical to ramping-up our testing capacity right across the country.

“As a result of those efforts and that teamwork hospitals have been able to treat more patients, as a result they save more lives and we have ensured that the peak of this virus has not overwhelmed the NHS.”

General Carter outlined a number of areas where the military was supporting the Covid-19 response from logistics with the Nightingale hospitals to assisting the cabinet office combat misinformation.

He said: “First and foremost this has been a logistic task and I would say that I think in it all of my more than 40 years of service this has been the single greatest logistic challenge that I've come across.

“The scale of the problem in just the first 25 days since we started working together with the NHS, they have gone from some 240 customers they deliver to normally to nearly 50,000 customers.

“This has involved creating 260,000 square feet of distribution warehousing – that's nearly four football fields worth – and some 38 additional deliveries routes per day and that is the equivalent to driving three times around the world.

“And we have been involved with the cabinet office rapid response unit with our 77 Brigade helping to quash rumours from misinformation but also to counter disinformation.

“What is interesting is that it has been a whole force not just the regulars but the reservists as well.

“It has involved defence civilians, defence contractors, scientists from Porton Down and something called the engineer and logistics staff corps where we bring in people from industry who work inside the military in times of crisis and provide expert support for how we might link in to the civilian community and indeed industrial support.

“I will single out one individual to give you an example of the sort of backgrounds we are talking about, a young major called Eb Mukhta has been mobilised from the reserves.

“His daytime job is as a logistics expert who runs Google’s transport network across Europe and North Africa and the Middle East. He has been a part of the supply team who has been working on how we distribute PPE.

“He has designed an e-portal in partnership with ebay which will in due course manage individual customers and he designed a bulk supply chain for distribution to all of the NHS regions and trusts.”


Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More