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Queues of ambulances formed outside several hospitals in Northern Ireland as pressure continued to mount on the excess capacity of the region’s health service.
The scenes unfolded when Prime Minister Arlene Foster took part in a call with other UK political leaders to review the planned relaxation of restrictions on family gatherings during Christmas.
No decisions were made, and Stormont ministers will meet to discuss the situation on Thursday amid increasing calls from doctors to rethink the relaxations and introduce new measures to slow the spread of the virus.
At that meeting, Health Minister Robin Swann will propose a series of new restrictions on executive colleagues.
“I will present a document to the executive on Thursday with a series of recommendations,” he told the MLA on Tuesday.
Medical Director Dr. Michael McBride warned that the region is now facing one of the most challenging periods of the pandemic after the most recent circuit lockdown failed to reduce infections.
Hospital capacity across the region stood at 104 percent on Tuesday.
At one point outside the Antrim Area Hospital, 17 ambulances with patients were lined up outside the emergency department. Doctors treated patients in the parking lot.
Northern Trust COO Wendy Magowan said: “I’ve never seen an ambulance line like this before … I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Describing the situation at Northern Trust, Magowan said 43 people were waiting for an emergency bed at Antrim Area Hospital and 21 at Causeway Hospital on Tuesday morning.
“These are elderly, frail and sick people and sadly they are being delayed in ambulances because we just don’t have the space to take these patients to our emergency departments,” he told the BBC.
“Ambulances should be on the ground caring for sick people, they don’t need to queue outside the emergency departments.”
The death of another six people with Covid-19 was announced on Tuesday, bringing the region’s death toll to 1,135.
Another 486 new cases of the virus were registered in 24 hours.
The circumstances we are currently facing are extremely worrying
Dr McBride said Northern Ireland is not where it should be in terms of case numbers at the start of a fortnight of holiday relaxations, including a five-day period of increased family gatherings over Christmas.
“The circumstances we are currently facing are extremely worrying,” he said.
“We are not where we need to be or should be in terms of virus transmission.”
Dr. McBride said it was important that the holiday season arrangements be “kept under review.”
Senior Scientific Advisor Professor Ian Young said there was no evidence to date to show that breaking the circuit has reduced the number of cases.
Instead, Prof Young said, there had been two weeks of “slow and steady increase” in the number of cases.
He said traffic flow data shows that many people did not heed the “stay home” message about the circuit break.
He said the R number was “at or a little above 1”. “It’s certainly not where we expected,” he said.
Professor Young added: “We are seeing a gradual increase in cases right now and that will certainly carry over to hospital admissions and, in due course, critical care occupancy and, sadly, deaths.”
“And those increases will add to the already high benchmark levels in terms of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients.”
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