STUDENT & RETIRED MEDICS ARE MOBILISED

Intensive plans also include other health and social care workers

radiography and occupational therapy professionals who have given up their registration within the last three years will be to invited onto an emergency register under emergency provisions

Recently retired pharmacists will be contacted in the coming days to ask them to come back to practice. In addition the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer has emailed every pharmacist in Northern

Ireland to ask them to sign up to locum work to help community pharmacists under pressure, and

Final-year social work students will qualify early on May 4 and will be able to enter the HSC workforce as social workers with immediate effect. The Department of Health website has established a link to provide further information and answer frequently asked questions.

This will be added to over the coming days at www.health-ni. gov.uk/covid-19-returningprofessionals.

In a bid to combat people’s anxiety over the virus, a church in Ballymena, Co Antrim, has erected a billboard urging people not to give up hope and to say, “No to fear”.

Meanwhile, a top PSNI officer has said work is under way to ensure staff are protected from infection.

The Police Federation earlier called for officers to be tested for Covid-19 amid fears the spread of the virus could result in a “skeleton” workforce.

The representative body for PSNI officers has also called for personal protection equipment to be made available for officers, including masks, gloves and scenes-of-crime white suits, as well as “spit and bite guards”.

Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd said work is under way to ensure officers are protected.

He added: “I want to reassure everyone we are working with our health partner agencies to prepare and protect our officers, and to make sure they can continue to do their job as safely as possible, protecting themselves and the people they need to help,” he said.

“We are doing this by having a full range of business continuity plans to protect and maintain essential services and protect our officers.

There are currently around 200 coronavirus tests being conducted each day in the region. Only people being admitted to hospital and those in care settings are being routinely tested.

Plans were announced on Thursday to increase that number to 800 within the next 10 days and also to widen the scope of the testing to cover certain groups of healthcare workers.

Police Federation chair Mark Lindsay warned: “We are not as well-resourced as other parts of the UK. We do not have access to military, so, we are very much left on our own.”

HOPE Sign in Ballymena THREE days’ pay taken from striking health service workers in Northern Ireland will be reinstated, Stormont’s Deputy First Minister said. Workers took action in a campaign for pay parity with other parts of the UK and what unions said were safer staffing levels. They have been on the front line of the response to the Covid-19 outbreak which is beginning to spread rapidly across the region. Deputy First Minister Michelle O’neill said staff walked out in January in a bid to create a health service able to respond to a crisis like the coronavirus. She added: “We hope that sends out a clear message in terms of our recognition of those workers who work on our behalf.”