Hospital waits: Patient faces 44-hour wait at Ulster Hospital ED

One person had to wait 44 hours in an Emergency Department to be admitted to the Ulster Hospital at the weekend.

The South Eastern Health Trust confirmed that another patient spent 12 hours in an ambulance before admission.

There are currently 92 people in the Emergency Department at the Ulster Hospital, 52 of them have been there for more than 12 hours.

Emergency departments across NI have reported extremely high numbers of patients over the weekend.

BBC News NI understands that all the trusts have breached targets for waiting times, but figures for other trusts have not yet been made available.

The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) confirmed that on Saturday 45 crews were delayed at hospital for more than two hours, with the longest wait being six hours and 19 minutes.

A total of 58 patients were waiting on trolleys in the Ulster Hospital as of Monday morning.

A week ago, Dr Sean McGovern, a consultant in emergency medicine at the Ulster warned that patients would have to wait longer because of Covid.

About 200 patients were waiting for a bed last Monday.

He said staff were under "enormous pressure" and medical staff were hoping those were the worst figures they would see in what has become a "normalised winter crisis".

He said fewer Covid-19 patients would mean fewer people waiting for a bed.

He said there had been a shortage of beds before the pandemic but the number of Covid cases was adding to existing problems, meaning patients face longer waits at emergency departments, for ambulances and for surgery.

More than 80 Army medics and 30 support staff were deployed to work in Northern Ireland hospitals in September. They have now returned to Great Britain.

Dr Frances O'Hagan, of the British Medical Association (BMA), said last week that hospitals had overwhelmed by coronavirus and other illnesses.

She said one problem was that too few people had been vaccinated for Covid-19.