Coronavirus NI: Resources to manage pandemic leavinge mainstream services stretched - Health Minister Robin Swann says there continues to be a “high increase” in the number of positive cases - Chief Medical Officer says officials working to try and get the R number below 1

Mr Swann told the committee that providing hospital care to 418 Covid-19 patients was the equivalent of 52 eight-bed units that they have to support.

“We have to support people who present who need medical treatment,” he said.

“We do that by having unfortunately to turn down many of our services that we want to keep going.”

He added: “We’re not doing this out of some whim that we’re turning people away or turning beds down; we’re doing it out of necessity.”

Robin Swann said the critical care surge plan had been updated by the Critical Care Network for Northern Ireland to provide the ability to incrementally flex capacity of ICU beds to 158 across the region.

But the UUP leader warned the level of staffing required to deliver the 158 ICU bed capacity would be “extremely challenging” and “impossible to sustain for long”.

He also said it would have an “unavoidable impact” on health services, including some complex elective surgeries.

As part of the plans, the Nightingale facility at the Belfast city hospital would retain capacity to support the entire region, he added.

Health Minister Robin Swann said there continues to be a “high increase” in the number of positive cases across Northern Ireland.

“The coming period is still highly uncertain and I’m deeply concerned about the increase in Covid cases over the last month and we believe further waves are still a continuing threat,” he said.

“But there are, however, signs that the action that has been taken by the Executive is having an impact with the number of infections actually stabilising.”

Mr Swann also said the health system had been under “severe pressure” over recent weeks in particular critical care units, and that a second wave of infection coinciding with winter means it will be most likely the “most challenging winter ever faced” for the health service.

Dr McBride said public health officials were trying to “balance both lives and livelihoods” but that he realised it was a particularly “difficult time” for those working in the hospitality sector.

“I know how distressing and anxious a time it has been for those working in many sectors, in hospitality, retail and close personal services,” he said.

“The difficulty with this virus is that it is highly transmissible and it spreads best when people are close together, and the more people that are close together particularly indoors the easier it is for the virus to spread.”

The chief medical officer said public health officials were working to try and get the R number below 1 and if they managed to do so fewer people would be infected and rates would fall.

Dr McBride said: “The R number in June was somewhere between 0.5 and 0.7 and then over the course of time as we relaxed measures and allowed some sectors to open up, we had a situation where by October the R number had gotten to between 1.4 and 1.6.”

He added that the interventions that had been put in place since had been “effective” in particularly in the Derry City Strabane area.

Northern Ireland’s chief medical officer has apologised to people for the “pain, distress and anxiety” that the coronavirus restrictions have caused.

Dr Michael McBride said “very significant progress” was being made in the fight against the disease due to the latest measures but he recognised that people were “fed up” of Covid-19.

“I can only apologise to everyone for the pain and the distress and anxiety that I know everyone is experiencing at this time and hopefully into the new year and into the spring things will look different to how they are at present,” Dr McBride said.

He made the comments as he gave evidence to the Stormont Health Committee on Thursday morning.