Would you allow your child to be tested by army personnel in school? What about vaccinated?

[Treesofwood]

Would you expect them to need parental consent to do this to young children?

Of course they'll need consent .

If I were to give consent, I wouldn't mind who was doing the vaccinations or tests.

Anyone can be trained in no time at all.

I'd expect to give consent, but I would be fine with both.

Is this happening?

No and no for your thread title. And of course a school would need parental consent. Why do you ask?

After giving consent, yes.

Yes, you do realise they have drs and nurses in the army? Untrained people won't be vaccinating

Yes and yes anyone that has be trained to do it for that matter. It’s not a complicated procedure.

Yes and yes. No school would ever do this without consent, surely that would be illegal.

I think my dc would be chuffed to bits if soldiers showed up to do testing.

Yes, parental consent would be needed. Just as it is for the flu sniff.

No problem with who carries it out.

Because the training is all verified by NHS, or the military are there solely as logistics providers for civilian practitioners

IIRC, there was quite a large pool of non-nursing practitioners who were under consideration for augmenting staff numbers, who would be trained to deliver only one or two procedures (ie swabbing and injecting) and these included people such as current and recently retired physios, podiatrists, opticians, paramedics, sports coaches as well as the military. Of those, the military were found to be most predictably available. Which was important for programme reliability.

Small spotterish point of detail: it won't be the school that is doing this.

It'll be part of the national programme, so your DC would be tested by the same practitioners wherever the tests were hosted (with the added option of home testing, or parent testing under supervision, but if the parent is not trained in the task that may be more unpleasant than it needed to be for the DC, and may be unreliable because of user error)

Schools are simply a convenient way to get through large numbers of DC quickly.

As it stands JCVI has the u50s with no clinical vulnerability as lowest priority for vaccine. So I doubt there will be a schools based immunisation programme, as there won't be the urgency

It's happening in Liverpool. Consent not needed (but you can opt out apparently). Every child given a barcode. Those who test positive "secured" whatever that means.

Why not the army? They're hardly going to turn up in full battle gear with guns.

Absolutely not, if Boris was that concerned the schools would be shut. The Army unless medical corp are not medically qualified to even take swabs, nor would they be aware of consent, which is probably why Boris has probably used them for this reason in the first place, because every HCP is fully aware of the law regarding this.

@lughnasadh

Of course they'll need consent .

If I were to give consent, I wouldn't mind who was doing the vaccinations or tests.

Anyone can be trained in no time at all.

Anyone can be trained? It took me 3 years to train to do this then continuous study, so no I disagree with you.

I don’t think ‘secured’ means sent to Guantanamo, so I’m ok with this

Jesus no way!!! This is the reason some parents have decided not to send their children back to school and are home educating, they’ve changed some laws meaning your children can be seized and quarantined if found positive.

No chance in hell I would let anyone test or take my child. No way I would allow
My child the vaccine, just read up on the side effects of the vaccines and why they’ve been trying to develop a Covid vaccine for the past 20 years but it’s never got past animal stage of testing because the side effects were so bad - now it’s being rushed through AND with no come backs to the pharm’s or Gov, so no one can sue or anything goes wrong......

Twickerhun Have you read the Covid Bill? What do you think secure your child means? Why use the term if it invokes the image it does?

People in Liverpool are being tested not given vaccinations.

They're aiming to test as close to the whole population as possible. This will give us really useful data on the spread of covid.

Why would anyone think this is a bad idea?

Yes, I would be ok with the army taking a sample of saliva from my child. I am pretty sure they will leave the heavy guns at home for that mission.
I am ok with the army organising distribution. That is what they are trained for. To be extremely efficient at this, and not miss a single individual.
It does not bother me at all. And I say that as someone who cringes when I spot them with all the heavy gear at airports.

@Treesofwood

It's happening in Liverpool. Consent not needed (but you can opt out apparently). Every child given a barcode. Those who test positive "secured" whatever that means.

Consent not needed? What? Wow Do you know this is illegal no matter how this Government dress it up. Ask any HCP, you have to have parents consent to do this, this is outrageous if this is true, and just look back on my other comment, no HCP would dare to do this on a child without consent, because of the ramifications from it. I certainly would not and I have been a nurse a long time.

HCA’s give vaccinations in GP surgeries after training.
You do not need to be a qualified nurse to vaccinate.

I hope they do start testing while schools regularly. That will certainly help.

I would be fine with school sending an email saying this would be happening and to let them know if I wanted to opt out.

My kids would be delighted. I would fear for any squaddies facing some of the Y10/11 girls at DDs school though!

Yes they would need consent about testing and vaccination, whoever is giving the care. They currently already ask for it.

And yes, I would let army personnel do it if there was a shortage of public health nurses, etc.

For fun:
I got stuck abroad as a student in my 20s with a vaccine but not sure who to ask to administer it. One student in my dorm worked in a lab (experimenting on rats/rabbits) so suggested the head researcher. I did it. The head researcher was apologetic as he normally did rabbits.