A HIGHLY skilled former NHS nurse has shut her business and signed up to help coronavirus patients on the front line for the next six months.

Julieann Politt, owner of VitaminIV and Collagen Aesthetics, in Leigh, has been accepted as a Pandemic Registered Nurse (PRN) after putting in a fast-track application to help.

After accepting her application on Monday, the NHS has asked her to clear her schedule for the next six months.

The 49-year-old is one of 20,000 former NHS employees and 750,000 volunteers nationwide who are joining the effort to fight the virus as it spreads through the UK.

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However, her decision means she must now live apart from her 17-year-old daughter, Isabella, due to the potential risk of passing the virus on to her.

Ms Politt said: “There are going to be 40,000 deaths at least, and we don’t want it to be any more than that.

“We want to keep it to 2 million infected.

“I do not want my daughter to get it; they need people with my knowledge and experience, and we’ve simply got to do what we’ve got to do.

“It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

“There is so much going on that they have got to deal with, and they need all the help they can get.

“If we can keep it at 40,000 deaths then we will have done remarkably well.”

Ms Politt worked as a clinical risk manager for the Clinical Negligence Scheme for NHS Trusts for four years, and has been a registered nurse for more than 25 years.

She is ranked as one of Great Britain’s 300 “Master Injectors” and has studied at University College London and King’s College London.

Her clinic, VitaminIV UK Ltd, based in Leigh, opened in December last year.

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It offers customers Intravenous Nutrition Therap (IVNT) which uses a variety of vitamin “cocktails” to give the body the nutrients it needs.

The clinic will close its doors from this week while Ms Politt goes to work with coronavirus patients.

While she has not been designated a specific hospital, her area of coverage means she could be helping in hospitals across Basildon and Thurrock Health Trust and the Barts Health Trust, in London.

Ms Politt has encouraged people to follow the government instructions for people to stay indoors and only go out when absolutely essential.

She said: “People need to stay indoors; at the end of the day they will not pass it on. But this just must be dealt with.

“I’m not in it for the money, I didn’t plan for them to pay me, but they are. I volunteered myself as a fast track application.

“Hopefully in a few months’ time things will be better, the children will be back to school, and we will all have have a very different outlook on life.

“But the more we can do to help now, the better we’ll be able to stop it, and the better it can be for everyone else, but it has to be dealt with.

“People like me with the qualifications are the prime age group with the experience and knowledge.

“They’ve asked a lot of nurses to come back from retirement, but if they’re over a certain age they may have to self-isolate themselves.

“They’d be putting themselves at risk to try and care for others.”