Covid-19: Health service in NI 'faces very difficult winter'

Northern Ireland is facing a "very difficult winter" due to the rising number of coronavirus cases and a return of other respiratory viruses, the chief medical officer has warned.

Sir Michael McBride said people had not been exposed to many viruses other than Covid-19, contributing to a "perfect storm" of additional pressures.

He said hospitals were already under pressures normally seen in mid-winter.

Hospital staff were "physically tired and exhausted", he added.

Another 1,963people have tested positive for the virus.

Chief scientific adviser Prof Ian Young said the number of people dying with Covid-19 may not hit a peak "for a couple of weeks".

Sir Michael told Stormont's Health Committee on Thursday that Northern Ireland faced a "challenging flu season".

"It feels like the middle of the winter at this present moment in time. If you're in discussion with our frontline staff, you will know that," he said.

Sir Michael said patients were suffering complications as a result of not being able to access care when they needed it because of "excessive wait lists".

He said: "If you then imagine potentially 400 to 600 Covid admissions on top of that by late summer into September time, then you can imagine the perfect storm of additional pressures."

About 180 people had received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at a walk-in clinic at Queen's University Belfast on Wednesday, Health Minister Robin Swann told the committee.

Asked about vaccine hesitancy among young people, Mr Swann said staff on site had engaged with walk-ins to see why they had not previously booked.

"What they were getting is: 'Well, sure this is handier'," the minister said.

"So it is about our younger age group, if they have to book maybe not as many are engaged as we'd like to be, but if it's on their doorstep, if they can walk past and walk in they are doing that."

His comments come as the first and deputy first ministers urged young people to get vaccinated at the upcoming "big jab weekend".

Mass vaccination centres will be offering walk-in first jabs for all adult age groups on 21 and 22 August.

Mr Swann told BBC Newsline that 70% of those currently in hospital intensive care units were not in receipt of their full vaccine.

"Just over 85% of our adult population is vaccinated - another 5% would see our hospital admissions decrease by 50%," he said.

"That takes pressure off our systemm which is seeing strains of high numbers of Covid-positive patients coming in.

"We are seeing the under-40s especially making up high percentages of positive cases - between two thirds and three quarters of those testing positive are in that age group which correlates with low vaccine uptake."

He urged students going to university to get jabbed before they go back for the new term.

Earlier, Dr David Farren, a microbiologist and infection control doctor with the Northern Health Trust, said hospitals were as busy now as they were in January this year, and the pressure "has not stopped".

He said the profile of patients had "completely changed" from the elderly and medically vulnerable, to unvaccinated young people.

Speaking to BBC NI's Good Morning Ulster programme, he said: "It's no longer the elderly, infirm, clinically extremely vulnerable people that we're seeing in. We're seeing unvaccinated young people who don't have any other illnesses.

"Every single day that we see this we're wondering how much further can we go, how much more can we give, all the while we know that on the horizon we have the flu season coming up, we have the winter vomiting bug coming up, we have bronchiolitis in kids coming up and if all those hit, it will be a perfect storm that will just take the knees out from under us."

Currently, about 86.3% of adults in Northern Ireland have had at least one dose of the vaccine.

Just over 77% are fully vaccinated. That compares to about 89.6% in the whole of the UK.