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AMBULANCE QUEUES formed outside several hospitals in Northern Ireland as pressure on the overcapacity of the region’s health service continued to mount.
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 today.
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 in the region stands at 104% today.
At one point outside the Antrim Area Hospital, 17 ambulances with patients were lined up outside the emergency room. 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.”
Deceased
Today the deaths of six other people with Covid-19 were announced, bringing the region’s death toll to 1,135.
Another 486 new cases of the virus were registered in 24 hours.
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, Young said, there were two weeks of a “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.
Young added: “We are seeing a gradual increase in cases at the moment 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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Ambulance queues
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 this 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 emergency departments.
Young previously noted a particular concern about infection rates in the Mid and East Antrim council area, which is covered by the Northern Trust.
He said a case prevalence of 313 per 100,000 people was more than 100 cases higher than in any other area in Northern Ireland.
Young said the breeding number was expected to increase “significantly above” 1 during the current relaxation period.
He urged anyone who was planning to take advantage of the relaxations at family gatherings around Christmas to stop socializing now.
“What I would say to anyone who is planning to blow bubbles, especially if you are going to see an elderly or vulnerable relative, for the next 10 days you should not see anyone else,” he said.
Dr. McBride urged people to avoid socializing or shopping in crowded commercial spaces before Christmas.
“We can’t have both,” he said.
“You know we can’t be out and about and socialize, whether it’s in restaurants or doing Christmas shopping and mixing crowds inside shopping malls or anywhere else and then feeling like everything will be fine when we meet older relatives and people. who are clinically extremely vulnerable during the Christmas period. It doesn’t add up. This is not how it works. “
Dr McBride also confirmed that no cases of the new Covid-19 variant had been detected in Northern Ireland.
He said there was “no need to be alarmed” by the appearance of the latest variant.
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