Britain calls in military to help with hospital COVID staffing crunch

LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) -Britain’s Ministry of Defence on Friday said that it had begun the deployment of the military to support hospitals experiencing staff shortages and extreme pressures due to record COVID-19 cases in the country.

The government said that 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 vaccination and the lower severity of the variant, but has warned of a challenging few weeks, as staffing is disrupted as people self-isolate.

The government has also deployed armed forces to assist with COVID-19 testing and vaccination programmes.