Letter: A coronavirus plea signed by 13 doctors

Northern Ireland has had the highest rate of new Covid-19 infections for our population size over the last few weeks within the UK and island of Ireland.

Worryingly, the number of cases is increasing rapidly in many areas over the last week, indicating that we have widespread community transmission within many parts of Northern Ireland.

We are in an exponential or rapid growth phase when cases can quickly rise and overload our health care system.

The proportion of tests that are positive compared to the overall number of tests is an important indicator of the level of community transmission.

On Friday there were 934 cases reported positive from a total of 8681 tests. The proportion of positive tests was 7% in the last seven days compared to 3.6% in the previous week (figures come from the NI Department of Health’s coronavirus dashboard).

This indicates that the increase is real and not due to expanded testing.

There remains clear evidence that Covid is a serious disease with the ability to cause severe illness and suffering for people and their families.

We appeal to everybody in Northern Ireland to do their utmost to reduce social interactions immediately, to follow social distancing of two metres or more, to wear face coverings as recommended, to practice hand hygiene, to get tested and self-isolate to limit spread when they have symptoms, and to use the NI Covid App.

This virus is extremely infectious and is very easily spread by close contact especially indoors.

We need to support people who test positive, and we need to move away from stigmatising people and areas with high levels of infection.

This pandemic requires us to work together to bring it under control urgently. We need to reduce the potential for transmission to protect our health service, and we need to fix our test and trace system to try and gain better control of this virus in our community.

If the current trajectory continues, and we don’t gain control of this urgently, it will become harder to bring under control.

Dr Claire Donnelly,

Consultant physician,

CSCST infectious diseases,

From north Belfast,

Working in Musgrave Park Hospital, south Belfast

plus Dr Conall McCaughey

Consultant virologist

Dr Michael Hunter

Consultant,

infectious diseases

Dr Sharon Christie

Consultant paediatrician,

infectious diseases

Dr Emma McCarty

Consultant,

genitourinary medicine, HIV

Dr Sara Hedderwick

Consultant in

infection medicine

Dr Michelle McIntyre

GUM and HIV

specialty doctor, GP

Dr Eoin Walker

Consultant,

GUM and HIV

Dr Louise McCorry

Specialist trainee in virology and infectious diseases

Dr Emma Kinghan

GUM and HIV

specialty doctor

Dr Say Quah

Consultant, GUM and HIV

Dr Suzie Todd

Consultant, GUM and HIV

Dr Stephen Megarity

Specialty trainee,

GUM and HIV

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