NI in four-nations meeting with Gove over Christmas rules
Watch: Vicki Hawthorne reports from Stormont
Northern Ireland has taken part in urgent four-nation talks with Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove as the UK Government faces growing pressure to reconsider plans to ease restrictions over Christmas. The meeting took place after two leading medical journals warned that a lessening of restrictions would "cost many lives" and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer demanded an urgent review. Downing Street conceded that the planned five-day Christmas easing to allow three households to mix indoors between 23-27 December was being kept "under constant review".
Mr Gove and the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland discussed the Christmas coronavirus rules on Tuesday evening. The meeting will reconvene on Wednesday to confirm whether the devolved nations are intending to continue with the five-day three-household bubbling plan.
However it is understood Prime Minister Boris Johnson intends to keep them in place for England.
Earlier Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon argued there is a case for lessening the planned freedoms for the festive period to combat a rise in infections and indicated she could break with the four-nations approach. But her Welsh counterpart Mark Drakeford said the current plans were a "hard-won agreement" and that he will "not lightly put it aside" ahead of the meeting.
Stormont's Health Minister Robin Swann declined to speculate ahead of the call between Mr Gove and the leaders of the devolved administrations over coronavirus restrictions at Christmas. However he said he intends to bring a paper to the Executive on Thursday with a number of recommendations. He was speaking in the Assembly and gave an update on the vaccine roll-out in Northern Ireland, saying more than 4,000 people have received the jab to date, with vaccination teams having been to up to 54 care homes across all five trust areas. DUP MLA Gary Middleton pressed Mr Swann on his view around additional restrictions over Christmas. Mr Swann said the spread of Covid and infections rate are stable but still slightly increasing, while the number of hospital inpatients has not decreased at all over the last number of weeks. He said despite the recent two-week circuit-breaker, those numbers are "still too high". "So I don't think the member will be surprised to know that I will be bringing a paper to the Executive on Thursday with a number of recommendations," he said. "But as I said earlier, he'll also know me well enough that I'll make those recommendations to the Executive so the discussion can be had there."
Northern Ireland's chief medical officer warned that the region is not where it needs to be in terms of Covid-19 infection rates ahead of further Christmas relaxations. Dr Michael McBride said it was important that arrangements agreed by the four UK regions for the festive season were "kept under review". "As I've said many times the virus doesn't read our plans and decisions that were made by all four nations 10 days ago in relation to planning and preparation for Christmas need to be kept under review, depending on how the virus is transmitting and the rates of infection that we're seeing," he said.
Dr McBride added: "I think people need to be really, really careful. We need to be very careful going into the Christmas period." "Ministers have previously made a decision around Christmas bubbling, that was some time ago when the rates of transmission were as they were and it's right and proper that ministers keep all of those decisions under review." He added: "I can't preempt what the outcome of those discussions will be but throughout all of this we have sought to ensure that we take a precautionary approach and seek to ensure that we protect as many people as we possibly can from Covid-19. "There's no doubt, we all know, that relaxations come with risk, and certainly the Christmas bubbling household relaxations come with increased risk." The CMO said those risks had to be balanced against the potential mental health benefits of allowing family members to come together.
Professor Ian Young said the R number was "at or a little bit above 1".
"That's certainly not where we hoped it would be," he said.
He said data of traffic flow show that many people did not heed the "stay at home" message over the most recent two-week circuit-break lockdown.
Prof Young said there was no evidence to date to show that the circuit-break had brought down case numbers.
He said there had instead been two weeks of a "slow and steady increase" in case numbers.
Prof Young flagged particular concern about infection rates in Mid and East Antrim council area. He said a case prevalence of 313 per 100,000 people was more than 100 cases higher than any other area of Northern Ireland.
The scientific adviser said hospital admission numbers had fallen slightly in recent days but were still at a "relatively high level".
He said any new surge in cases had to be viewed in the context of this high baseline of between 300 to 400 Covid-19 inpatients.
He highlighted that the number of coronavirus inpatients at the start of the first wave was zero and at the start of the second wave was around 20.
Prof Young said the current death rate was much higher than experts had hoped for after the latest restrictions.
"We're seeing a gradual increase in cases at the moment and that will undoubtedly feed through to hospital admissions and in due course critical care occupancy and unfortunately deaths," he said.
"And those increases will come on the top of already high baseline levels in terms of hospital beds being occupied by Covid patients."
Prof Young said the reproduction number was expected to rise "significantly above" 1 during the current period of relaxations.
He urged anyone who was planning to take advantage of the relaxations on household gatherings over Christmas to stop socialising now.
"What I'd be saying to anybody who is planning to bubble, particularly if you're going to be seeing an elderly or vulnerable relative, for the next 10 days you should be seeing nobody else," he said. "You should just not be seeing anybody and then when you go into that Christmas bubble you have the best confidence that you're not bringing the virus with you."