It is fitting that the PM and football star Raheem Sterling have added their names to the Daily Mirror’s campaign to honour our NHS heroes fighting coronavirus.
When we ask those on the medical front line to risk their lives to save ours, a medal is the least they deserve.
Such official recognition of their bravery would be applauded by the public. But that same public will demand decent pay rises in future for carers, nurses and doctors.
Significant changes in behaviour since the lockdown gives us hope that the pandemic’s spread will be slowed and eventually halted.
However, Boris Johnson should not be let off the hook. His cataclysmic failure to order enough testing kits has left the NHS battling with one hand tied behind its back.
Partly thanks to this gross oversight, one-in-four doctors are off work with the condition or self-isolating after showing symptoms.
Let’s hope the formidable ramping up of medical care, seen in the opening of the temporary 4,000-bed Nightingale Hospital in London, will be in time to save countless lives.
Age of experts
We must celebrate that Britain is a world leader in science and in the vanguard of efforts to find a vaccine for coronavirus.
Frontline NHS staff are lionised for their battle against the virus but we mustn’t forget the back room brains in research laboratories who are burning the midnight oil to save lives.
Politicians might sneer at experts but science is a powerful weapon in the right hands in the pursuit of the public good. And in this fight it is the experts who will save us.
These unsung heroes also deserve a public recognition too rarely given.
Spy there Ken
Say “hello” to Ken McCallum, appointed the new director general of British security service MI5.
You might not yet know very much about him but we bet the chief spook knows a lot about you. It’s what they do.
