Coronavirus: 100 members of armed forces drafted in to help deliver boosters amid Omicron surge

Military personnel are to be drafted in to help the NHS get Covid-19 booster jabs into arms.

The Ministry of Defence said that about 750 servicemen and women will help deliver jabs and co-ordinate the rollout in England and Scotland.

Some 600 personnel from across the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force have been made available to NHS England, while more than 100 are assisting in Scotland, the Ministry of Defence said.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “We have rapidly mobilised service personnel to work alongside our dedicated health services to accelerate the vaccine booster programme.

Armed forces drafted in to help deliver boosters

“Our armed forces will help to get vaccines into arms as quickly as possible as we continue our efforts to support the UK’s response to the pandemic.”

It comes as St John Ambulance made an urgent appeal for volunteers to help the vaccination effort.

The charity’s head of community response, Adam Williams, said: “St John Ambulance recruited and trained almost 30,000 vaccination volunteers – including 20,000 vaccinators – between November and March.

“If everyone who trained to vaccinate with St John steps forward now, even for just two six-hour shifts, we will have more than enough people to do everything that’s required of us over the next few weeks and help the nation get ahead of the Omicron variant.”

Today, Scotland’s Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said that further restrictions in Scotland were inevitable.

said a new target to offer boosters to all eligible adults by the end of the year will be “extremely challenging” and the Scottish Government would be asking for more help from the military to scale up the vaccination programme.

Asked about more restrictions in response to the Omicron outbreak, Mr Yousaf told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “I think it’s inevitable that we will announce additional, protective measures.”

Asked about more restrictions in response to the Omicron outbreak, Mr Yousaf told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “I think it’s inevitable that we will announce additional protective measures.”

Changes to the current coronavirus rules will be announced at Holyrood on Tuesday.

Public Health Scotland last week urged people to postpone Christmas parties because of the increase in Omicron cases across the country.