UK to bring in retired doctors, nurses as it steps up coronavirus planning
The United Kingdom is considering bringing in recently-retired doctors and nurses as part of an urgent "battleplan" being drawn up by the government to fight the coronavirus spread.
Ministers may allow the "emergency registration" of staff who have left the health service and encourage firms to permit employees to work from home.
Health minister Matt Hancock told Sky News that the UK was planning for the global coronavirus epidemic to deteriorate.
“We’ve got a clear strategy for dealing with coronavirus - a very, very significant challenge,” Hancock said. “We’re also planning in case this gets worse, much worse.”
He also said the current plan “is to contain this virus. That's the stage we're in now, we hope that we can succeed in doing that.”
The government is currently allocating £40m to finding a vaccine and improving treatment for patients who have the disease, according to Hancock.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to chair a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee on Monday.
Johnson personally urged the country to heed official advice on preventing the spread of the virus, including "the importance of washing our hands with soap," after the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the UK rose to 23 on Saturday.
The United States, Australia and Thailand have recorded their first deaths from the infection, which has already claimed nearly 3,000 lives globally, mostly in China, the country where the epidemic first emerged.
Health officials announced three new presumptive positive cases of the infection in Washington State on Saturday.
Among those three cases, a man in his 50s died, health officials said, adding that he had had no close contact with an infected person or a relevant travel history that would have exposed him to the virus, known as COVID-19.
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