1,000 KILLED BY COVID-19 IN ULSTER

Restrictions may extended after grim milestone

THE death toll from coronavirus in Northern Ireland has reached a grim milestone.

Nisra’s weekly bulletin for deaths “involving Covid-19” states the total figure “has now surpassed 1,000, reaching 1,053”.

The 66 deaths recorded in the week, from October 24 to 30, is higher than the last two bulletins which recorded 37 and 27.

Nisra said: “The week ending October 30 saw the largest weekly number of Covid-19 related, hospital deaths (53) since mid-april – while the 10 Covid-19 related deaths occurring in a care home in the same week compares to totals last seen at the end of May.”

“As per previous reports, Nisra says that further analysis of the deaths shows that of the 469 deaths of care home residents involving Covid-19 in the year to date to October 30, 2020, 80.0% (375) occurred in a care home, with the remaining 94 occurring in hospital.

“On this basis, deaths of care home residen ts account for 44.5% of all Covid-19 related deaths.”

Th e figures w e r e released as th e E xecutive is expected to announce what new me a su re s will be introduced next week to continue the battle to reduce the spread of Covid-19.

Current restrictions are set to end on Fr i d ay, h owe v e r there are conflicting views within the Executive as to whether they should be extended.

In a statement to the Assembly last night, Health Minister Robin Swann said: “If we do not take action, we almost certainly will have to intervene more significantly if we are to av oid our health ser vice being overwhelmed.”

The statement came in the wake of the Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mal lon s ay in g “we sh oul d b e extending the restrictions”.

She told the BBC: “For me, the focus here is on Christmas, families need to be together at Christmas, they need to be together safely.”

First Minister Arlene Foster told Thursday’s Stormont press conference that restrictions had made a positive impact, with the R number dropping to 0.7 but that no decision had been made on whether to extend the measures.

It is understood a proposal by the Department of Health suggests a twoweek extension of the restrictions on hospitality could mean avoiding further curbs before Christmas.

In his statement to the Assembly, Mr Swann said: “In order to sustain sufficient ICU capacity to care for critically-ill Covid and non-covid patients, painstaking and complex work continues. As of today there are 93 patients in critical care across Northern Ireland, of which 49 are Covid positive.

“The Trusts have capacity across their critical care units totalling 119 critical care beds.

“The Belfast Trust has a further 10 fully-occupied cardiac surgical ICU beds, giving a total capacity across the region of 129 ICU beds.

“This scaling up of ICU requirements inevitably and unavoidably comes at a cost. Even with revised staffing ratios, expanding the number of ICU beds requires the redeployment of experienced and specialist staff away from other parts of the health service.

“Whilst some procedures are unfortunately being cancelled, in many cases they are being quickly rescheduled.

“Other elective services, many of which were cancelled in the first wave, are continuing.”