{"id":214557,"date":"2020-10-05T06:30:04","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T06:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214557"},"modified":"2020-10-07T05:15:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T05:15:45","slug":"military-will-help-distribute-covid-19-vaccine-says-hancock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214557","title":{"rendered":"Military will help distribute Covid-19 vaccine, says Hancock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexandra Topping and Lisa O\u2019Carroll \u2013 The Guardian Oct 4, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Military personnel work inside the ExCel centre in London on March 31, 2020, which was transformed into a Nightingale field hospital to deal with an expected surge of Covid-19 cases. Despite its 3,600 bed capacity, like most of the Nightingale hospitals it remained almost empty. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

The UK\u2019s military will be involved in the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, Matt Hancock<\/a> has told the virtual Conservative party conference.<\/span><\/p>\n

The health secretary also said the government was preparing a campaign to challenge the anti-<\/strong><\/span><\/a>vaccination movement<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>for when a vaccine is rolled out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked about his hopes for a vaccine during an \u201cinteractive interview\u201d with the anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali, he said it was \u201cthe great hope\u201d, agreeing with Boris Johnson, who on Sunday morning told BBC One\u2019s The Andrew Marr Show that the public could expect some \u201cbumpy months\u201d ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe plans are in train, a combination of the NHS and the armed forces are involved in the logistics of making the [vaccine] rollout happen, because it\u2019s not just about developing and testing the vaccine,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

He also revealed the Covid-19 app that launched on 24 September, more than four months later than initially promised, had been downloaded 15m times<\/span><\/p>\n

The app for England and Wales, which uses the bluetooth signal in mobile phones to track close and sustained contact between users and warns those who may have been exposed to an infectious person that they should self-isolate, had \u201cgone off the shelf like digital hotcakes\u201d, Hancock said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a separate interview later, he revealed the government\u2019s plans to tackle the anti-vaccination movement and persuade people to take the vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSadly there are a small number of people who make an active case against vaccines based on misinformation,\u201d he said, adding that the government would introduce a \u201ccounter narrative \u2026 to explain the importance and safety of vaccines\u201d based on previous experience of \u201ctackling misinformation in other fields\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a huge amount of work going on \u2026 to tackle misinformation about the vaccine because after all, if a vaccine is successfully brought, to be able to be used, it will have such a positive impact on everybody\u2019s life,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said the priority recipients of a vaccine would be decided by the independent joint committee on vaccination and immunisation, which last week published draft advice prioritising older adults in care homes and care home staff, people aged over 80 and health and social care workers.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his interview with Ali, Hancock said he wanted to see a greater sense of shared responsibility between individuals and the NHS for preventing people falling ill.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think for too long the NHS has [been] picking up the pieces when things go wrong and instead we need more of a sense of shared responsibility \u2013 individual people, everybody, responsible for their own health as well as the NHS taking responsibility to keep people healthy in the first place,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

As well as presenting unprecedented challenges, the pandemic had also proved that positive change could happen very quickly, said Hancock. He added that, while people should be able to get a face-to-face appointment with a doctor if they wanted to, video consultations were \u201cmore convenient and easier\u201d for many people. About 50% of visits to the GP and 50% of outpatient visits were done by telemedicine, up from less than 10% before the crisis, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s good for patients, it\u2019s good for doctors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Describing the Covid vaccine as \u201cthe great hope\u201d, Health Secretary says the military will help implement a mass vaccination program <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":206325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214557"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214560,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214557\/revisions\/214560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/206325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}