NI could see 90% reduction in coronavirus death rate by Easter thanks to roll-out of vaccines but next six weeks will be ‘worst part of pandemic’, says BMA NI chair Dr Tom Black

Dr Tom Black, who chairs the British Medical Association’s Northern Ireland committee, said the addition of the new vaccine to the alread-approved Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine means over 100,000 of the most vulnerable people here could be given effective immunity against coronavirus by the end of this month.

The new Oxford vaccine,which has been developed alongside the pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca, will begin rolling out through GPs in Northern Ireland on Monday, with a stock of around 50,000 doses already in place.

“You’re looking at, hopefully, in excess of 100,000 by the end of January — really big numbers and the highest risk patients, the ones most likely to go to hospital,” Dr Black told the News Letter.

“That will take pressure off the health service, probably, in the second half of February.

“You will start to see a reduction in deaths in February and, hopefully, we would see a reduction of more than 90% in death rates before Easter.”

He continued: “The advantage of the Astra Zeneca vaccine is that GPs can give it out of their fridges in routine surgeries and there will be tens of thousands of people getting this vaccine.

“GPs will start on the 4th of January and we will be vaccinating as many people as we can, depending on supply.

“We’re hoping to get all the over-80s vaccinated by the end of January. There are 82,000 people aged over 80 and, of those, about 20,000 are in nursing homes. The plan would be to vaccinate everybody over 80 and, hopefully, get started on the over 75s.”

Dr Black was speaking to the News Letter ahead of the lifting of an 8pm curfew today which had forced even essential shops such as food retailers to close by that time each night since Boxing Day.

Despite the good news about the vaccination programme, Dr Black warned that the next six weeks will be the most dangerous period of time seen in the entire pandemic in Northern Ireland as he urged the public not to drop their guard.

“To be very clear, the worst part of the pandemic will be the next six weeks,” he told the News Letter.

“The highest risk to an individual of catching an infection will be in the next six weeks. The highest risk to an old person of catching an infection from their younger relative is in the next six weeks.

“If ever you were going to be careful and safe, it’s the next six weeks.”

He added: “Nothing we have done before this compares to the next six weeks. If people don’t understand that there will be more pain, more suffering and more deaths.

“That’s the inevitable outcome of any careless behaviour in the next six weeks.”

On Thursday, Northern Ireland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride said 50,000 doses of the vaccine developed by researchers at Oxford University alongside the pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca are already in Northern Ireland, with GPs set to begin administering the jabs on Monday.

While no figures were released by the Stormont health department yesterday on the number of new cases and deaths in Northern Ireland, statistics published earlier this week showed a record-breaking number of new infections had been identified on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The highest number of cases ever recorded in a single day in Northern Ireland came on Wednesday, with 2,143. This was almost matched on Thursday when there were 1,929 and the figure for Tuesday — 1,566 — was at the time the highest ever reported.

Dr Black said: “The seven-day total (number of people testing positive) is 8,228 which compares with 4,468 the previous seven days. So, in roughly one week it’s doubled. The number of patients over 60 years old has gone up to 1,378 which shows that it is basically bleeding across the generations. It’s the older folk who end up in hospital.

“Every parameter that you look at is getting worse and the numbers won’t have taken account of the holiday period yet because that has a lag period of at least 10 days — we will see that in the second week of January.

“We will have six or eight weeks of very difficult demands on hospital care ahead of us.”

The News Letter also asked Dr Black about the contingency planning that has been put in place.

“The contingencies in Nortehrn Ireland are the Nightingale in Belfast City Hospital, which is an intensive care overflow facility, and then the Nightingale in Whiteabbey which is a step-down facility so in other words it’s for people who are too unwell to go home but well enough to come out of intensive care and out of the major hospitals,” he said.

“Those are our two contingency plans. The bottle neck that we are going to see, probably in the second and third week in January, will probably be the bottleneck in general pratice, ambulances, emergency departments, but particularly in medical wards where we already have nearly 500 patients (with coronavirus) and that number will increase.

“The pressure on intensive care units hasn’t been as bad in this wave because we are better at keeping people out of intensive care, but we are alrady seeing in London and the south of England that they are transferring patients to distant parts for ventillation and intensive care treatments.”