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WITH MANY HOSPITALS beyond their capacity and the number of Covid-19 cases increasing again, new, more stringent restrictions could be put in place to stop the worrying trends currently being witnessed in Northern Ireland.
There were lines of ambulances in front of several hospitals in Northern Ireland last night as pressure mounted on overcapacity in the region’s health service.
At one point outside the Antrim Area Hospital, 17 ambulances with patients were lined up outside the emergency room. Doctors treated patients in the car park, as hospital capacity in Northern Ireland was 104%.
Much criticism has been directed at the Northern Ireland Executive for the current situation and hospital bosses have said they are “extremely concerned” by the “severe” pressures on hospitals.
And today 510 new cases were announced in Northern Ireland, along with eight more deaths. In Ireland, which has more than twice the population, 431 new cases were confirmed today.
Cases
In the past seven days, 43,910 tests have been conducted for Covid-19 in Northern Ireland.
Of these, 3,326 have been positive. This compares with 3,140 positive tests in the previous seven days.
In early autumn, Derry and Strabane led the way in terms of the worst affected areas in Northern Ireland.
But now other areas are also seriously affected. In the information provided on the 7-day rate per 100,000 inhabitants in Northern Ireland, the most affected area is Middle and East Antrim, which has an incidence of 272.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in the last week alone.
They are followed by Newry, Morne and Down, Mid Ulster and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon.
All of these areas have a significantly worse incidence than the areas on the other side of the border.
Among the 3,326 cases last week, people between the ages of 20 and 39 accounted for 1,056 of them. Another 991 cases were detected among people aged 40 to 59, and the remaining cases were distributed among other age groups.
The number of people who tested positive has risen in each of the past two weeks after falling in each previous week since the week that began Oct. 12, when 7,334 people tested positive.
These rises and falls have coincided with changes in restrictions in Northern Ireland.
On October 14, schools were ordered to close and pubs and restaurants faced new restrictions under the new measures announced by the executive.
However, in November the measures in the North were not as strict as in other jurisdictions. While cases have dropped considerably from their peak in Ireland, cases have also declined in the North, but have stabilized and have remained stubbornly high since then.
Northern ministers clashed over how to lift the restrictions in mid-November. It re-entered a circuit breaker lockout on November 27 after a seven-day easing of restrictions.
Cases haven’t fallen below 200 in months and the trend of falling numbers appears to have reversed again.
Hospitals
In the past seven days in Northern Ireland, 187 people with Covid-19 were admitted to hospital.
In the kind of trends we’ve seen before, the rise in hospitalizations started in October and continued through November, as the number of cases also increased.
Out of a peak of 622 hospitalized patients with Covid-19 in November, there were 457 patients in Northern Ireland hospitals with Covid-19 at midnight last night.
Today, there were 415 Covid-19 patients in the hospital. This compared to 398 yesterday.
Of the 2,923 beds available in Northern Ireland hospitals, 3,062 of them are occupied.
According to the Covid-19 panel of the NI Department of Health, this means that 105% of the beds in the entire service are occupied.
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It said: “Any hospital showing an occupancy capacity greater than 100% indicates that the hospital is operating beyond its current available bed capacity.”
There are more over-subscribed hospitals (8) than are not (4) at present.
There are another 32 Covid-19 patients in the ICU, with an ICU capacity at 88%. 25 of these patients are connected to ventilators. But there are not only patients with Covid-19 in the ICU. There are another 68 ICU patients and only 14 unoccupied beds.
So far, 1,143 deaths have been recorded due to Covid-19 in Northern Ireland. Of these, 45 have been registered in the last week.
After staying low for many months, the number of recorded deaths rose sharply in October and November to levels similar to those seen in the early stages of the pandemic.
A continued high number of cases has been warned to lead to more hospitalizations and more deaths.
It will also take a significant amount of time until a Covid-19 vaccine has been widely distributed in Northern Ireland.
Today it was revealed that 4,000 people have received their first dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, with more than 130,000 people in the UK so far.
Speaking today, Health Minister Robin Swann has said “extreme” measures may be necessary to try to stop the spread of the virus in Northern Ireland.
But he declined to be lured when asked if he would recommend introducing new restrictions before Christmas.
“I can say that we will seek extreme and robust interventions to get back to where we should be,” he said.
“The detail of that and the date of that I will leave for discussion in the executive tomorrow.”
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