DEALING with the Novichok attack helped prepare Wiltshire Police for the coronavirus pandemic.

Deputy Chief Constable Paul Mills was at the forefront of the county force’s response to the chemical attack in Salisbury and Amesbury three years ago this month. 

And while there are obvious differences between the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and the killing of Dawn Sturgess in 2018, Mr Mills said some of the principles of the emergency service response were the same. 

He said: “With the Novichok incident you had the criminal element, which you don’t have here, but what you had was a public health emergency. 

“You had this invisible threat to the community down in Salisbury and Amesbury and we were having to lockdown areas and keep the public safe.

“[We had to] try and contact trace those that had come into contact potentially with the Novichok and if you think about it, all of the things that we did there in terms of protection measures and messaging to the public are quite similar to the coronavirus.”

Wiltshire Police Federation chairman Insp Mark Andrews said a lot of the techniques around removing PPE learned during the Salisbury attack had been applied during the coronavirus pandemic. 
“We’ve used that new education already and it’s come to good stead when we’ve been out there dealing with Covid,” he said.