Army drafted into Greater Manchester from today as part of the coronavirus response effort

Hundreds of military personnel are set to work across the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester from today, as part of the government’s coronavirus response effort.

The government has announced that from today, the army will be drafted to Greater Manchester to carry out ‘targeted’ asymptomatic testing for coronavirus. 

The Ministry of Defence explains that 800 military personnel including soldiers have been deployed to the region as part of the community support effort for testing. 

Those who are of a higher risk of infection such as social care staff and people with ‘public facing jobs such as bus drivers’ will be targeted for testing, the Manchester Evening News reports. 

The community testing operation is set to be similar to the one carried out in Liverpool.

It comes after Matt Hancock explained that one out of three people suffering from the virus show no symptoms, and therefore asymptomatic testing is crucial to identify those who are unknowingly infected.

More than 5,000 military personnel are being deployed in total across the country, including in Kent, Derbyshire, Kirklees and Lancashire. 

The MOD said in a statement: “In Manchester today – Monday – another large scale task starts, with 800 personnel deploying from nine regiments across the British Army at the request of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) through the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

“These personnel will prepare to work across all 10 local authority areas of Greater Manchester to carry out targeted asymptomatic testing of specific populations that may be at a higher risk of infection including social care staff, key workers, public facing occupations such as bus drivers, and those in high risk environments such care homes and shared accommodation for the homeless.

“The task builds on lessons from previous asymptomatic community testing in Liverpool, Lancashire, Merthyr Tydfil, Medway, and Kirklees.”

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, an MP in Lancashire, said: “The new year will see new levels of armed forces support to overcoming this pandemic.

“Thousands of service personnel are working throughout the United Kingdom, wherever they are needed to assist the civil authorities.

“Manchester is the latest of those tasks and will be an important contribution to protecting the highest risk groups as the city seeks to recover.

“As a North West MP I am acutely aware of the considerable time many of us have been labouring under some form of lockdown and I hope our soldiers will help us get to the day when these restrictions will start to lift.”

Mr Hancock added: “We are enormously grateful to the Armed Forces for lending their support to these important community testing programmes.

“Around one in three people with coronavirus showing no symptoms, asymptomatic testing is crucial to identifying those who might be unknowingly infected, and protecting our most vulnerable.

“These community testing schemes are part of a national testing programme with millions of lateral flow tests arriving in schools tomorrow, for the testing of students and staff, to add to the hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic tests currently being conducted in care homes, across the NHS and in critical infrastructure workplaces and food manufacturers.

“While the Army, alongside thousands of medical professionals and volunteers, help roll out the vaccination programme, we must remember that the first line of defence against the virus remains to wash our hands, cover our faces and keep space.”