New strain means NI virus levels could go up again, warns British Medical Association

The British Medical Association’s Northern Ireland chair, Dr Tom Black, told the News Letter that his organisation is concerned that despite the already “very high levels” of the virus here “we don’t seem to have the English variant of the virus”.

Earlier this week, Northern Ireland’s chief scientific advisor Professor Ian Young said the new strain, which was identified in England and spreads more quickly than previous variants, could become dominant here as he cautioned against lifting the current lockdown restrictions too early.

“The virus and that strain of virus will still be out there in the community when we emerge from lockdown which is why we have to do it very, very carefully,” Professor Young said.

Speaking to the News Letter, Dr Black said: “Obviously we have very high levels at the moment and very busy hospitals.

“The big concern I would have is that we don’t seem to have the English variant of the virus, so there’s a concern if that comes in, the levels might go higher again because it’s more transmissible.”

He continued: “I know that sounds very negative when we’re working our way through the vaccinations, but I don’t think we’re going to see any great benefit from the vaccination process in terms of infection rate and hospital admissions until probably the middle-to-end of February.

“The reason is that we’re focussing our vaccinations on the over-80s and the over-70s.

“That means we will definitely be reducing the mortality rate because those are the people most likely to die, but it will only have a marginal effect on the transmission rate and hospital admissions.”

Dr Black also suggested, meanwhile, that a move taken by health authorities in the Republic of Ireland could prove risky on this side of the border due to the current vaccination policy.

The Health and Safety Executive in the Republic announced earlier this week that it would recall health workers who had been advised to self-isolate due to contact with a positive case.

Dr Black said: “It’s worth noting that the healthcare workers in Northern Ireland are only getting one (dose of) vaccination.

“The Republic of Ireland would have said they needed all their healthcare workers vaccinated with a second Pfizer vaccine in order to make sure that healthcare workers were available to work.”