GP’s warning as NI passes ‘peak’ of Covid-19 hospital admissions

Dr Tom Black, the NI chair of the British Medical Association (BMA), said that although the number of new hospital admissions is now less than half since it peaked on April 3 (at 126), a significant number of those currently in hospital are likely to die over the next 10 days.

Dr Black has also given a stark warning that any drift away from the social distancing measures will cause a devastating second wave of deaths in May or June.

“We are decreasing in terms of inputs to the system with Covid symptom, but as we are aware that patients become much more ill around 10 days after being admitted to hospital, we would expect the number of deaths this week to remain high,” he said.

Dr Black said there was also some good news among all the bad.

“Our big concern has always been that we would run out of intensive care beds – that we wouldn’t be able to flatten the curve – but thanks to the public in Northern Ireland it would appear that we have managed to flatten the curve,” he said.

“As of yesterday (Sunday), the figure was 36 patients in intensive care beds with Covid, and we still have 41 ICU beds available.

“So we haven’t exceeded the capacity of the system to cope with these patients.”

Dr Black said increased Covid-19 testing and contact tracing was also important, and added: “We expect a second wave (of Covid-19) this winter, but we will get a second wave sooner than that if we don’t continue with social distancing, and with hand-washing, we will get a second wave and it will be worse than the first one.”