Matt Hancock was speaking at a daily press conference on coronavirus (Picture: Sky/AFP)

Final year medical students will move to the frontline of the NHS to deal with the coronavirus crisis, the health secretary has announced.

Matt Hancock said that from next week 5,500 final year medics and 18,700 final year student nurses ‘will move to the front line’.

In the now-daily Covid-19 press briefing, normally held by the prime minister, Mr Hancock said that would mean there is a total of more than 35,000 additional staff coming into the health service, when combined with other measures.

Mr Hancock said 11,788 recently retired NHS staff had responded to the call to return to the service. They included 2,660 doctors, more than 2,500 pharmacists and other staff and 6,147 nurses.


The Health Secretary took questions via video link today (Picture: Sky)

The NHS is under increasing strain from the coronavirus crisis (Picture: Getty Images)

He added: ‘I pay tribute to each and every one of those who is returning to the NHS at its hour of need.’



Mr Hancock said the final year students would ‘move to the frontline to make sure we have the people we need in our NHS to respond to this crisis.’

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The move follows similar schemes in other countries, including Italy, which has seen medical students fast tracked into hospitals.

Universities have already closed nationwide to help stop the spread of Covid-19 across the country.

Elsewhere, Mr Hancock confirmed that next week a new temporary hospital called the NHS Nightingale would open at the Excel centre in London.

He added: ‘The NHS Nightingale Hospital will comprise two wards, each of 2,000 people.

‘With the help of the military and with NHS clinicians we will make sure that we have the capacity that we need so that everyone can get the support that they need.’

The Prime Minister voiced concerns last night that the NHS may struggle to ‘cope’ with the increasing number of cases of the virus, as he urged the public to follow the most restrictive limits on movement in living memory during a nationwide lockdown.

In a separate development, Mr Hancock launched ‘NHS volunteers’, in an effort to get 250,000 people – all in good health – to help the NHS, ‘for shopping, for the delivery of medicines and to support those who are shielding to protect their own health.’

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