Always wear a mask outside, NI’S chief scientist advises
THERE was no Northern Ireland representative on the Government’s Sage committee during a crucial period of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has emerged.
Northern Ireland’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Ian Young, has said he was on longterm sick leave until the end of March, meaning he was unable to take part in meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
The first time his name appears as an attendee on the minutes of a Sage committee meeting was April 7, when he was present to provide evidence and advice as part of the Sage process.
Sage provides scientific and technical advice to support Government decision-makers during emergencies and has played a key role in the official response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The matter was discussed at yesterday’s meeting of the Stormont health committee when Prof Young and Health Minister Robin Swann were asked about the controversial decision to end contact tracing in Northern Ireland on March 12.
Chair of the committee, Colm Gildernew, asked whether anythis one from Northern Ireland attended Sage meetings in the runup to the decision.
“To the best of my knowledge, I don’t believe there was anyone from Northern Ireland at those meetings,” said Prof Young.
He continued that it would be his preference that someone from Northern Ireland would have been involved in the discussions at that stage.
He also said he believed that the decision was taken to halt contact tracing in England due to the high number of cases at the time, and that he understood was Government policy as opposed to a recommendation made by scientists at that time.
He said that “it was felt that there were too many cases occurring” and there “wasn’t sufficient capacity to contact trace in order to suppress the infection”.
Prof Young continued: “Additional measures would need to be taken that came in the form of social distancing, generally referred to as lockdown, which has been effective.”
However, Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan said: “On March 12, there were only 47 positive cases of Covid-19 here in the north.”
The West Belfast MLA said “it could be argued it was the right decision” to stop contact tracing in England at the time — however, Northern Ireland was not experiencing similar levels of infection.
He added: “Why did we make a similar decision? What exactly happened? I would like to understand the process there.”
Prof Young said he was unable to answer as he was on leave at the time, but Mr Swann said: “It was capacity.”
He explained there were only 12 people trained to carry out contact tracing at the time.
Prof Young continued: “The truth is, there would have been substantially greater number of cases as testing capacity was much more limited at that time.”
However, outlining the current situation, Mr Swann said there is sufficient capacity to carry out contact tracing for everyone who tests positive with Covid-19 and that a business case has been submitted for a second premises, while there is scope to scale the system up or down depending on requirements.
He also revealed that the team involved in contact tracing includes doctors and senior nurses. This is because he wants staff to be able to provide medical advice to anyone being advised to isolate, and added that this is a superior service to the “call centre” system in place throughout the rest of the UK.
The issue of contact tracing has been discussed repeatedly at the Stormont health committee. On April 23, the issue was raised by Mr Gildernew, who asked the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael Mcbride, whether the decision to stop contact tracing was a mistake.
Dr Mcbride said: “No. It was based on sound public health considerations.”
Mr Gildernew subsequently asked Dr Mcbride whether the scientific advice on the decision to stop contact tracing could be made available to the committee.
TRANSLINK staff faced being crushed or falling on to rail tracks as hundreds of young people descended on Helen’s Bay and Crawfordsburn over last weekend, the transport body’s chief executive has said.
Chris Conway said that at one stage over 1,400 youths were crammed into stations at the seaside destinations and that staff had no option other than putting themselves at risk to control the situation.
“It was very clear a lot of drink and drugs were taken. It was very difficult to control, even for the PSNI,” he told Stormont’s Infrastructure Committee yesterday morning.
“Public safety took precedence. We had to get the crowd dispersed.
“We deployed over a dozen staff to the unmanned halt at Helen’s Bay after the reports that large crowds had gathered on the beach.
“They all had to be removed within a few hours by staff putting themselves at great risk.
“There was a danger of crushing or falling on to the tracks”, the Translink chief added.
“We arranged trains in such a way that anyone who was using the train normally could socially distance on that, but in other areas we just had to get people on to the train and dispersed.
“The staff handled it well and I’m sure it’s not the last time we will face those difficulties.”
Mr Conway also told the committee that revenue for Translink has been “next to nothing” during the Covid-19 outbreak as the company faces a £114m shortfall.
“Additional support will be required to ensure we maintain a viable public transport network going forward,” he warned.
He told the committee that staff furloughing is not applicable to Translink in its public service role.
“We would see a reduction in our salary bill on the basis of working a total different shift pattern,” said Mr Conway.
“Our saving around our network at the minute is probably running at about £250,000 on a sort of weekly basis.
“There has been a Sunday