Coronavirus: ‘Several hundred’ ventilators being ordered by NI NHS to vastly expand critical care

The revelation came as part of a briefing into the Northern Irish authorities’ handling of the coronavirus (more properly known as Covid-19), as it continued its spread across Northern Ireland.

There has been widespread speculation that the UK may not have enough ventilators to keep alive those people who come down with a severe dose of the respiratory virus.

Setting out the situation the Province faces at a press conference today (which was conducted over the internet, with no actual members of the press present) Dr Miriam McCarthy, director of commissioning at the Health and Social Care Board, said: “At the moment we have 88 critical care beds for adults, and a further 12 for children.

“We also have additional ventilators that are available in other parts of [the NHS], for example we have ventilators in operating theatres.”

If the ventilators are added to the critical care bed units, then “we can bring that up to 139 places in which people can be readily ventilated”.

She continued: “At the moment, that is certainly much more than enough to respond to immediate demand.

“But what we don’t know is what the demand is going to look like in two weeks or four weeks’ time. So we’re expanding that capacity further.

“We have 40 ventilators that are ordered and en route and some of those were ordered a few months ago. Some of those will be expected to be with us in the next week or two.

“And we are also ordering many more ventilators – some for use in a critical care unit, and also others that you call non-invasive ventilators, they can be used in medical wards.

“We’re ordering hopefully several hundred of those in the next number of days.

“We may or may not need those. But what we want to do is have enough equipment and potentially more equipment than we need right now, so we can respond to whatever is coming.

“We’re all hoping we won’t need that number of ventilators. But it’s better to have that equipment ordered.”

Trusts will be “stepping down elective and planned procedures” to free up staff to man critical care units.

When it comes to planned operations like hip replacements, whilst “a lot of people may not want to hear this... right now is not the time to be doing those procedures when there are more urgent needs”.

Urgent and emergency procedures (like cancer ones) will go ahead as planned.