North’s health service facing probably its ‘toughest winter’, warns Minister

The Northern Ireland health service is probably facing into its "toughest winter" in its history, the North's health Minister Robin Swann has stated.

The Minister issued his warning on a day when his department reported two new coronavirus deaths in Northern Ireland, bringing the North’s death toll to 562.

This was the first time since very early in July that more than one Covid-19 death was recorded in the department’s daily bulletin. In the past two months ten people died in Northern Ireland from the virus. More than 550 died in the three-and-a-half months from mid-March to the end of June.

The department on Wednesday afternoon also reported that 71 people have tested positive for Covid-19, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 7,365.

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So far 237,003 people have been tested for the virus in Northern Ireland.

“I am increasingly of the view that Covid-19 has the potential for another full-scale assault,” said Mr Swann at a departmental press conference.

“More people will sadly lose their lives and suffer long-term damage to their health.”

“This is going to be a tough winter, the toughest winter probably our health service has faced in its history,” said Mr Swann.

The Minister said he has approved plans for a second Nightingale facility in Northern Ireland to be located at Whiteabbey Hospital in Co Antrim.

The Whiteabbey facility would provide an additional 100 regional intermediate care beds to tend to patients coming out of more serious treatment.

At the height of the pandemic in the North a Nightingale facility was set up in the tower block of City Hospital in central Belfast. It was later stood down. Mr Swann said that hospital could be reactivated if necessary.

The North’s chief medical officer Dr Michael McBride told reporters that the ages of people testing positive for the virus was changing. Two-thirds of those now coming down with Covid-19 were aged under 40. He said just ten per cent of cases now were happening to people aged 60 and over compared to that age cohort suffering 40-50 per cent of cases in March.

Mr Swann and Dr McBride acknowledged that the testing system currently was under strain, particularly with parents of children returning to school anxious to have them tested for Covid-19. “If your child needs a test they will be tested,” he said.

Dr McBride said the testing system was working well, notwithstanding the current pressures. “We are testing more per 100,000 of population than any other part of these islands,” he said.

Dr McBride also said that there was little doubt that with schools returning there would be “clusters of cases associated with schools”. He said the cases would be associated “not necessarily” with the school environment but could be linked to activities associated with school, happening “on the way to school, before school, and after school as much as what happens in school”.