[ad_1]
Queues of ambulances have formed outside several hospitals in Northern Ireland as pressure continued to mount on 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 members of the Northern Ireland assembly 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 closure failed to reduce infections.
Hospital capacity across the region stood at 104% 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.
Wendy Magowan, director of operations for the Northern Trust, said a patient had waited 10 hours in an ambulance overnight.
“We never knew that at Antrim hospital that just doesn’t happen, but there was no safe area to bring that patient,” he said.
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.
McBride said Northern Ireland was not where it needed to 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.”
McBride said it was important that the holiday season arrangements were “kept under review.”
Senior Scientific Advisor Professor Ian Young said there was no evidence to date to show that the disruption of the circuit has reduced the number of cases. Instead, there had been two weeks of a “slow and steady increase” in the number of cases with data showing that many people did not heed the “stay home” message after the circuit was interrupted.
He said the R number was “at or a little above 1”.
“It’s certainly not where we expected,” he said. “We are seeing a gradual increase in cases right now and that will undoubtedly be reflected in hospital admissions and, eventually, critical care occupation and, sadly, deaths.
“And those increases will add to the already high benchmark levels in terms of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients.”
Describing the situation at Northern Trust, Magowan said 43 people were waiting for an emergency bed at Antrim Hospital and 21 at Causeway Hospital on Tuesday morning.
He said that 100 of the 400 Antrim hospital beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients.
“The pressure has been mounting, we are seeing our Covid numbers here at Antrim hospital increase,” he said. “Day after day we don’t see this second increase start to decrease at all.”
