'Your NHS needs you': Government calls for 250,000 volunteers to help the NHS fight coronavirus

Leading the daily briefing in Downing Street today, Matt Hancock called on healthy volunteers to come forward to fill the gaps in the health service which is facing its biggest challenge to treat those who have contracted coronavirus.

He “paid tribute” to 11,788 generous recently retired NHS staff who had returned to the health service, as he announced more than 35,000 extra staff would pour into the NHS, including 5,500 final-year medics and 18,700 final-year student nurses who would "move to the frontline" next week.

The volunteers would be asked to help the 1.5m the Government has identified as being particularly vulnerable to coronavirus, and who they have therefore told they must stay at home for 12 weeks.

Those who sign up would help with delivering medicines from pharmacies, driving patients to and from appointments, or making regular phone calls to check on people isolating at home.

Once registered using the GoodSAM app volunteers can be called on by GPs, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, midwives, NHS 111 advisers and social care staff via a call centre run by the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), who will match people who need help with volunteers who live near to them.

Dr Nikki Kanani, GP and NHS Director of Primary Care, said: “Coronavirus is the biggest challenge we have ever faced, which is why we’re rallying the troops and telling the public: your NHS needs you.”

She added: ““This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments where a single action from one person can be the difference between life and death for another, and simple acts of kindness are going to make all the difference in keeping some of the most vulnerable people well and out of hospital.”

However the acute pressure on hospitals was laid bare as Mr Hancock unveiled a 4,000-bed temporary hospital, the Nightingale Hospital, would be opened in the ExCel Centre in London with the help of the military.

Mr Hancock said the hospital would open next week and 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."

But it came as the Health Service Journal reported London’s critical care units were just four days from running out of beds unless action was taken.

They reported NHS bosses had warned the need for intensive care beds was set to double every three days.

It comes amid the largest jump yet in deaths from the disease in the UK, with 87 deaths added to the toll overnight, bringing the total to 422.

Some four of those new deaths were in Leeds, meaning 10 people have now died after testing positive for Covid-19 in Yorkshire.

As of 9am today there had been 90,436 tests carried out countrywide, with 8,077 testing positive.

In Yorkshire 272 people have tested positive.

The UK's first coronavirus-related death was recorded on March 5. It took another 13 days for the number of deaths to pass 100 on March 18, then three more days to pass 200 on March 21. It has taken a further three days for the total to pass 400.