My proposal offers a creative solution to a number of very significant challenges associated with the current Covid 19 crisis.
The challenges:
1) A lack of operatives available to carry out essential mass-testing.
2) A lack of trained operatives to carry out the mass-immunisation programme.
3) A potential lost generation of young people whose education, exam prospects and timely admission to university that has been adversely affect by the crisis.
4) The very significant threat of transmission within households and the wider community disproportionately represented by the teenage demographic.
5) A lack of trained doctors and nurses in the UK.
6) A need to recruit a workforce dedicated to the expansion of what must represent a massive new or expanding economic sector in the UK: health, epidemiology, immunology, pharmacology and related sectors.
The solutions, as I see them:
I propose that teenagers and young adults whose education is currently on hold: sixth-form students whose A-levels have been essentially cancelled and who will not be able to attend university in the autumn, and students of universities who currently can’t resume their studies, should be offered the opportunity to engage in a fast-track training programme to qualify them to test members of the community for Covid 19, and/or administer the vaccine.
I would suggest that candidates be recruited, with the aid of the advice of their educational institutions, from courses such as chemistry, biology and physics in the case of the A-Level students, and in the case of university students, pharmacology, nursing, medicine and other hard science based subjects, although not necessarily exclusively. Cast the net wide.
It has been demonstrated in recent studies that individuals from this demographic are more likely than those from other demographics to suffer the virus asymptomatically, making them of particular risk to their own households and to the wider community. They’re young, bored, they want to mix with their friends and to ‘party’. I suggest they’re offered the opportunity to do so in, for instance, currently unused hotels where they could also be trained to do this important work while distanced from more vulnerable members of the community.
This programme could represent a considerable economic asset for the country: the Covid 19 virus is mutating, it’s likely that epidemiology and pharmacology will continue to be disciplines that require significant investment and development into the future, and will therefore represent valuable exports for the UK. Recruitment into these sectors are likely, therefore, to secure significant dividends. My proposal may well secure the necessary work-force for this essential and lucrative expansion, but also provide kudos in other areas of expertise in science for those candidates who engage in the programme. It could also inspire those involved to change direction and train as nurses and doctors in the future: the UK has a considerable deficit of trained medical staff, as I write this there are currently 46,000 healthcare professionals either incapacitated with Covid 19, or self-isolating.
These measures, if implemented, will create a new ‘Heroic Generation’ of those who are currently described as ‘Generation Z’, measurably increasing their life chances and employment prospects into the future.
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