We know we love the NHS – now’s the time to show it

One of the few heartening pieces of news in recent days is that some 500,000 people have answered the call to volunteer to help the National Health Service. The “National Help Service”, as it’s been nicknamed, is a remarkable display of selfless devotion to duty in a country hitherto seemingly characterised by panic buying, reckless sharing of public spaces, and the likes of Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin denying science.

These new pairs of hands will release more NHS clinical teams to concentrate on the unprecedented pressure that the peak of the coronavirus pandemic will deliver in the coming weeks.

That, though, is about the limit of the reassuring developments as the epidemic intensifies. Whether unavoidable because of the unprecedented nature of the epidemic or not, the NHS is still short of the personal protective equipment (PPE) – masks, aprons, gloves – that clinicians need to save lives and prevent hospitals themselves becoming Covid-19 hubs. Ministers plead that they have ordered millions of PPE items, and that they will arrive soon. Unfortunately, that will already be too late for some London hospitals already at capacity.

Just as urgent a problem is the desperately inadequate programme for testing. Here again, the government says it has millions of testing kits that are on their way. Without them, and without the physical means to protect themselves, it is little wonder that some NHS and care workers feel like “cannon fodder” in this particular war. Effective testing would allow lower absenteeism and early treatment for the trained and experienced paramedics, doctors, nurses, assistants, technicians and others whose skills are the key to preserving life. Respirators too remain in short supply.

Of course, no one could predict a pandemic on this scale arriving at this time. However, as former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has pointed out, countries such as South Korea and Germany have been able to test and screen much larger proportions of their populations with many more testing kits. Finding out who has got coronavirus and who has had it (and may have acquired immunity) is not only key to helping limit the spread of the virus, but also to getting people back to work and restarting the economy. This lack of testing is, for example, also having a debilitating effect on the police and public transport services. As the World Health Organisation has stressed, a country needs to “test, test, test” before it has any hope of getting a grip on the disease. This was a warning the government did not sufficiently heed.

There are also immediate measures that can be taken to assist health workers. Parking restrictions near hospitals could be universally relaxed to help NHS staff get off crowded public transport, where social distancing is impossible, and into the relative safety of their cars. As the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran urges, the government could also easily abolish the visa charges for NHS staff to keep their families in the UK.

There is no shortage of public affection for the NHS. In this war they are being treated, rightly, with the same respect as the armed forces are in other conflicts. The Clap For Our Carers campaign is a way to show thanks to those who work so hard to look after us when we are at our weakest. A more practical gesture would be for the rest of the population to stay at home. The best help of all would be to give them the tools to do their job. If only warm words and public affection were all that was needed.