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Spies with medical qualifications have been switched from fighting terrorism to join the national fight against coronavirus, the head of MI5 revealed today.

Sir Andrew Parker said that “qualified doctors, nurses and other health professionals” who were employed by the Security Service had been “released back into the NHS” and were now “serving on the frontline” to help tackle the pandemic.

He added that MI5 had also given protective security advice on the design and construction of the new Nightingale hospitals set up in east London and elsewhere for Covid-19 patients.

But he emphasised that MI5 was also still busy tackling the terrorist threat and that this remained essential to prevent any disruption to the country’s struggle against coronavirus.

“At his time, it’s vital that the national security machinery is working so that the national emergency we are in now isn’t further complicated or compounded by other events,” he said in a BBC interview.

“So MI5 is at work doing our job, dealing with, tackling and holding back all the types of threats that we exist to deal with.

“Some of the people that we are most concerned about as potential sources of threat to this country are, of course, themselves under the lockdown arrangements so movements are restricted and that makes a difference to behaviour.

"But it does not eradicate the threat and there is plenty of work we are doing to stay on top of things.”

Sir Andrew, who retires this week, was asked about whether priorities should change in future, given that deaths from Covid-19 had far outstripped the number of British lives lost to terrorism since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

He said that this was “not one for me to call” but predicted that the “Government was bound to think different in future”.

He added: “I don’t envy elected politicians who have to make those priority decisions … between different sorts of risk, the possibility of pandemic, versus national security threats, versus road safety. Those are really tough decisions.”