Meet the Royal Navy medics battling on the front line of the coronavirus crisis at Portsmouth's Queen Alexandra Hospital

Royal Navy medical staff have been working round the clock at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham since the pandemic reached the city.

Normally, the team of navy doctors, nurses and staff work alongside the NHS in hospitals across the UK to keep their clinical skills sharp.

Now they’re helping to bolster up the UK’s response to the health crisis, with the Joint Hospital Group (South) – a team of 215 military medical staff, including 79 from the navy – based at QA.

Commander Alister Witt, the commanding officer of JHG(S), said: ‘Normally it’s us sending our people to the front line from the hospital here, but very much at the moment the front line has come to us.

‘We’ve had to really get our people onto an operational footing to focus on an operation in the home environment where they’re actually delivering their key clinical skills to help out something that’s a national main effort.’

More than 100 people from across the Portsmouth area have lost their lives to the disease, with 151 people confirmed to have contracted Covid-19 in the Portsmouth City Council area.

And the military medics know how much pressure is faced by their colleagues in the NHS, who are working harder than ever to save lives, and how critical a role they have to play.

Leading Naval Nurse Sarah Belcher said: ‘As a military team we’re doing a lot more hours than we were prior to the Covid outbreak.

‘A lot of our external training that we’re required to do as part of military operations has been cancelled as a result of Covid, so many of those hours we’re now spending to try and boost the numbers inside the hospital and the department and support the NHS staff.’

Lieutenant Amy Phelps, a naval nurse working in critical care, said: ‘Knowing that you have the skills and experience needed to contribute to this crisis definitely makes me proud, and proud of the whole team I’m working alongside.’

Surgeon Captain Barrie Dekker, the military clinical director of JHG(S), and divisional director at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, said: ‘We’ve all had to change our working patterns. The NHS trust are virtually all on twelve hour shifts to try and cover the increased workload, so our military staff are fitting in with that as well, making themselves key members of each one of the teams.’

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