Northern Ireland to enter six-week lockdown from Stephen’s Day

Updated 5 minutes ago

It is understood that the Northern Ireland Executive has agreed to a SIX WEEK lockdown starting on St. Stephen’s Day.

The measures will include the closure of all non-essential retail services, as well as close contact services, while the hospitality sector will be limited to take-out services only.

PA understands that no changes will be made to the bubbly Christmas arrangements.

The measures are scheduled to be reviewed as the lockdown progresses.

Stormont executive ministers met this afternoon to consider Health Minister Robin Swann’s recommendations. The discussions continued tonight.

Widespread closures have been urged in retail, hospitality and leisure.

Health officials are understood to have said that a reduction in classroom learning after Christmas would also help combat the spread of the disease.

Swann also wants the executive to take strong action to crack down on New Year’s Eve house parties.

Sources at Stormont said the proposals are more akin to the large-scale lockdown in March than recent periods of outage restrictions.

The number of cases continues to rise in Northern Ireland despite the last two-week circuit break.

Health chiefs have cited low compliance with regulations and guidance as one reason that infections, hospital admissions and death rates remain relatively high.

Hospitals in the region are running low.

On Tuesday, queues of ambulances were witnessed at Northern Ireland’s Accident and Emergency (ED) departments as patients were being treated in car parks due to lack of capacity within hospitals.

At one point, 17 ambulances with patients were lined up outside the emergency department of the Antrim Area Hospital.

Ahead of today’s executive meeting, Economy Minister Diane Dodds said Northern Ireland was in an “extremely challenging position” in terms of transmitting the virus.

“I have said over and over how difficult this cycle of lockdown is for the economy, we have published data on the cost of the cycle of lockdown to the economy, but we will wait and see what the discussion in the executive brings forward. ,” she said.

Today, the Health Department dashboard revealed that another 12 people with Covid-19 had died in Northern Ireland, bringing the region’s death toll to 1,154.

Another 656 new cases of the virus were reported, while figures indicated that pressure remained high in hospitals with 460 Covid-19 positive patients, including 32 in intensive care.

The hospital occupancy rate was 104%.