WITH MANY HOSPITALS beyond capacity and case numbers of Covid-19 rising again, tougher new restrictions could be implemented to stem the worrying trends being witnessed at present in Northern Ireland. 

Last night, there were queues of ambulances outside several hospitals in Northern Ireland as pressure mounted on the region’s over-capacity health service.

At one point outside Antrim Area Hospital, 17 ambulances containing patients were lined up outside the ED. Doctors were treating patients in the car park as hospital capacity across Northern Ireland stood at 104%. 

Much criticism has been levelled at the Northern Irish Executive over the current situation and hospital chiefs have said they’re “extremely concerned” about the “severe” pressures on hospitals.

And a further 510 new cases were announced in Northern Ireland today, along with eight further deaths. In Ireland, which has well over double the population 431 new cases were confirmed today. 

Cases

In the last seven days, 43,910 tests for Covid-19 have been carried out in Northern Ireland.

Of these, 3,326 have been positive. This compares with 3,140 positive tests in the seven days prior.

In the early autumn, Derry and Strabane was leading the way in terms of the worst affected areas of Northern Ireland.

But, now, other areas are also being badly affected. In information provided on the 7-day rate per 100,000 people in Northern Ireland, the worst affected area is Mid and East Antrim which has an incidence of 272.7 per 100k people in the last week alone.

This is followed by Newry, Mourne and Down, Mid Ulster and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon.

All of these areas have a significantly worse incidence than areas across the border.

Among the 3,326 cases in the past week, people aged between 20 and 39 accounted for 1,056 of them. A further 991 cases were detected among people aged 40-59, with the remaining cases spread across other age groups.

The number of people testing positive has risen in each of the last two weeks after falling from in each week prior since the week starting 12 October when 7,334 people tested positive. 

These rises and falls have coincided with changing restrictions in Northern Ireland.

On 14 October, schools were told to shut and pubs and restaurants faced new restrictions under new measures announced by the executive.

However, in November the measures in the North weren’t as stringent as other jurisdictions. While cases fell a considerable amount from their peak in Ireland, cases did indeed fall in the North too but plateaued and remained stubbornly high since then. 

Ministers in the North clashed on how to lift restrictions in mid-November. It re-entered a circuit breaker lockdown on 27 November after a seven-day easing of restrictions. 

Cases haven’t fallen below 200 in months and the trend of falling numbers seems to have reversed again.

Hospitals

In the past seven days in Northern Ireland, 187 people with Covid-19 were admitted to hospital. 

In the kinds of trends we’ve seen above, the rise in hospitalisations began in October and continued through to November as case numbers also rose.

From a high of 622 inpatients with Covid-19 in November, there were 457 patients in Northern Irish hospitals with Covid-19 at midnight last night.

Today, there were 415 patients with Covid-19 in hospital. This compared to 398 yesterday. 

Out of 2,923 available beds across hospitals in Northern Ireland, 3,062 of them are occupied.

According to the NI Department of Health’s Covid-19 dashboard, this means that 105% of beds across the service are occupied. 

It said: “Any hospital displaying an occupancy capacity beyond 100% indicates that the hospital is operating beyond its current available bed capacity”. 

More hospitals are over subscribed (8) than aren’t (4) today.

There are a further 32 Covid-19 patients in ICU, with ICU capacity at 88%. 25 of these patients are on ventilators. But, there’s not just Covid-19 patients in ICU. There are a further 68 patients in ICU and just 14 unoccupied beds.

So far, there have been 1,143 deaths recorded due to Covid-19 in Northern Ireland. Of these, 45 have been recorded in the past week.

After remaining low for many months, the number of deaths recorded rose sharply in October and November to levels similar to those seen in the early stages of the pandemic.

It has been warned that a continued high case number will lead to more hospitalisations and more deaths. 

It’ll also take a significant amount of time until a Covid-19 vaccine has been distributed widely in Northern Ireland.

It was revealed today that 4,000 people have received their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, with over 130,000 people in the UK so far.

Speaking today, Health Minister Robin Swann has said that “extreme” measures could be required to try to stem the spread of the virus in Northern Ireland. 

But he declined to be drawn when asked whether he would be recommending the introduction of new restrictions before Christmas.

“I can say we will be looking for extreme and robust interventions to get us back into a place where we should be,” he said.

“The detail of that and the date of that I will leave for discussion at the executive tomorrow.”