UK to use firefighters to provide food, accumulate bodies in coronavirus crisis
28 March, 2020
The United Kingdom use firefighters to greatly help deliver food, retrieve dead bodies and drive ambulances as it braces for the looming peak of the coronavirus outbreak which has already claimed the lives of more than 22,000 people around the world.
Britain initially took a strikingly modest method of the worst health crisis because the 1918 influenza epidemic but changed tack to impose stringent controls after projections showed 25 % of a million British persons could die.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ordered a virtual lockdown of the world's fifth greatest economy to avoid the spread of the COVID-19 virus banning Britons from leaving their homes for all non-essential reasons.
So far, 578 persons in the United Kingdom have died after testing positive for coronavirus and the number of confirmed cases has increased to 11,658. THE UNITED KINGDOM toll is the seventh worst on earth, after Italy, Spain, China, Iran, France and the United States, according to a Reuters tally.
Under a deal struck between the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), Fire chiefs and Fire and Rescue Employers, firefighters will continue steadily to react to their usual emergencies but will now also carry out new tasks.
"We face a public health crisis unparalleled inside our lifetimes. The coronavirus outbreak is now a humanitarian emergency and firefighters rightly want help their communities," said Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary.
"Many fear the loss of life in this outbreak could possibly be overwhelming and firefighters, who often handle terrible conditions and incidents, will be ready to step in to assist with body retrieval."
In addition to collecting those who die should there be mass casualties, firefighters can drive ambulances, and take food and medicine to the vulnerable beneath the agreement.
To cope with the outbreak, Britain has recently asked tens of thousands of retired doctors and healthcare workers to come back to work, while hundreds of thousands of people have volunteered to aid the state-run National Health Service.
On Friday, the capital's ambulance service appealed to former paramedics and control room staff for help, and London's police asked officers who have retired in the last five a long time back.
"It is important that we take all reasonable steps to bolster our numbers," London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said.
Britain claps
Britons in the united states took with their balconies and front doors on Thursday evening to applaud health employees and bang pots and pans to show support for all those working for the country's much-loved NHS.
There's been criticism that the federal government hasn't acted quickly enough to supply protective equipment to frontline healthcare staff in fact it is also scrambling to source a large number of ventilators to treat people that have severe breathing problems due to the virus.
The government has admitted that it missed an possibility to join a European Union procurement scheme to source the gear because of a contact mix up.
"There was an issue with regards to communications therefore the tendering process on those schemes had already started," Business Secretary Alok Sharma told BBC radio on Friday.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com