BREAKING NEWS: RAF plane returns from Turkey with urgently needed NHS equipment

The RAF plane, believed to be carrying a delayed consignment of personal protective equipment (PPE) for NHS staff, has landed in RAF Brize Norton in the UK.

THE plane had been dispatched from the Oxfordshire base, where two other planes are on stand-by to pick up further kit from Turkey, late on Monday.

The consignment, which was ordered on Thursday and originally due to arrive on Sunday, includes 400,000 badly-needed surgical gowns.

The government has come in for mounting criticism over its failure to ensure NHS staff treating coronavirus patients have the protective equipment they need. Ministers insisted they were pursuing “every possible option” to secure additional kit but said that, with unprecedented worldwide demand, the situation is “very challenging.”

Local Government Minister Simon Clarke could not give a timescale on when the full supplies would arrive earlier this week, saying only that it would be in the “next few days.”

Separately, the government said that 140,000 gowns had arrived from Burma – but with the NHS using 150,000 a day, the demand on resources remains intense.