Queues of ambulances form outside NI’s over-capacity hospitals
Queues of ambulances have formed outside several hospitals in Northern Ireland as pressure continues to mount on the region’s over-capacity health service.
The scenes unfolded as First Minister Arlene Foster participated in a call with other UK political leaders to review the planned relaxation of restrictions on household gatherings over Christmas.
No decisions were taken, with Stormont ministers set to convene to discuss the situation on Thursday amid intensifying calls from medics to rethink the relaxations and introduce fresh measures to curb the spread of the virus.
Chief medical officer Dr Michael McBride has warned that the region now faces one of the most challenging periods of the pandemic after the most recent circuit break lockdown failed to drive down infections.
Hospital capacity across the region stood at 104% on Tuesday.
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.
Director of operations at the Northern Trust Wendy Magowan said one patient has waited 10 hours in an ambulance overnight.
“We have never known that in Antrim hospital, that simply does not happen, but there wasn’t a safe area to bring that patient in,” she told the PA news agency.
The deaths of a further six people with Covid-19 were announced on Tuesday, bringing the region’s toll to 1,135.
Another 486 new cases of the virus were recorded in 24 hours.
Dr McBride said Northern Ireland is not where it needed to be in terms of case numbers at the start of a fortnight of festive relaxations, including a five day period of increased household gatherings over Christmas.
Chief scientific adviser Professor Ian Young said there was no evidence to date to show that the circuit-break had brought down case numbers.
Prof Young said there had instead been two weeks of a “slow and steady increase” in case numbers.
He said data of traffic flow show that many people did not heed the “stay at home” message over the circuit break.
He said the R number was “at or a little bit above 1”.
“That’s certainly not where we hoped it would be,” he said.
Describing the situation at the Northern Trust, Ms Magowan said 43 people were waiting for an emergency bed at Antrim Area Hospital and 21 at the Causeway Hospital on Tuesday morning.
She said that 100 of the Antrim hospital’s 400 beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients.
“The pressure has been building, we are seeing our Covid figures here in Antrim hospital increasing,” she said. “Day in day we’re not seeing this second surge starting to abate at all.”
Prof Young earlier flagged particular concern about infection rates in 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 any other area of Northern Ireland.