Coronavirus surge: ‘What we feared in March is now here’ warns top NI surgeon as operations are cancelled across NI

Mark Taylor, a consultant who leads the Royal College of Surgeons in Northern Ireland, said that the cancellation of procedures across the five health trusts here was “disappointing but understandable” given the scale of the influx of coronavirus patients expected this month.

The Belfast, Southern, South Eastern, Western and Northern trusts have all announced the cancellation of surgeries — and in the case of the Belfast Trust the cancellation of even urgent cancer procedures — as staff are redeployed to intensive care units and medical wards equipped to deal with seriously ill coronavirus patients.

Mr Taylor, in an interview with the News Letter, issued a dire warning about the scale of the problem facing Northern Ireland’s hospitals.

“There is a real concern that this particular wave will be much worse than what was predicted before,” he said.

“One of the difficulties is that the public are listening and they might say ‘we have heard this before’ but on this particular set of projections — because of Christmas and because this virus loves the winter and cold weather — we are now in the situation we all feared was going to happen in the first wave and thankfully didn’t.”

On the cancellation of surgeries, Mr Taylor said: “The response has had to be taken based on the rising number of covid admissions, but also the modelling and predictions for what’s going to happen in the next few weeks - particularly the last two weeks in January,” he said.

“The modelling is predicting a major influx of patients requiring medical assistance for covid. In any influx there will always be people who need to go into intensive care, and who need to be ventillated.

“There is this expectation of really needing to ramp up the Nightingale, and needing to really ramp up the medical beds in hospital.

“The difficulty with that is the enhancement of staff needed for the ICU and the medical wards, when we are already over capacity. The combination of a busy winter anyway, the expected rise in covid with that massive intake in those requiring oxygen support, intensive care support, that all-in-all has led to this really major decision around the cessation of all types of surgery that don’t fall under the remit of emergency.

“It’s disappointing but completely understandable.

“The key to all of this is that, even though there have been these major decisions taken to stop surgery, to redeploy staff, what we are actively working on at the minute is a way to first of all identify the top priorities in terms of surgical management and then secondly to find somewhere in this overburdened, overwhelmed system so we can operate on those people.”

He said that the cancellation of appointments would have serious knock-on effects on the waiting lists for care in Northern Ireland, which were “dire” even before the pandemic.

Mr Taylor added: “What we knew before the pandemic and the consequences of the pandemic make it even more essential that we radically change the way we do business, because we’ve got to address the elephant in the room — our massive waiting list.”

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers — and consequently the revenue we receive — we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to newsletter.co.uk and enjoy unlimited access to the best Northern Ireland and UK news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.newsletter.co.uk/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Alistair Bushe

Editor