Health Minister Robin Swann updates MLAs on latest deaths to Coronavirus
It brings the total number of deaths to 347.
During a statement in the Stormont Assembly, Mr Swann thanked the health care workers and families during the COVID-19 outbreak.
He also pays tribute to the centenarian Captain Tom Moore for his inspirational fundraising efforts.
Mr Swann said the first death from Covid-19 in the North of Ireland was recorded on Thursday, March 19.
“Since then we have seen 3,536 confirmed cases of the disease.
“Sadly, today I announce a further nine deaths. That brings the total to 347 souls that have been lost,” the minister says.
He says the figure includes a number of people who have died at home, in residential and nursing homes and in hospices.
Mr Swann says he hopes those “clamouring” for restrictions to be lifted here will consider those figures “and will be jolted back to reality”.
He says that, as the chief medical officer has warned, “Northern Ireland remains on a knife edge”.
Turning to testing, Mr Swann says it is something he wants to “increase further” and outlines that a “scale-up of diagnostic testing” is being planned.
He says “22,328 individuals have been tested in local labs”, with that number including “over 7,000 healthcare workers”.
He also outlines that there is new testing and surveillance at some GP practices in Northern Ireland and that there will be a “rolling programme of testing”.
Mr Swann then says that for “key workers in other sectors, as well as those in the health and social care” sector, there are three drive-through sites – the City of Derry Rugby Club, the SSE Arena in Belfast, and Craigavon MOT centre.
On the clamour to life the lockdown restrictions, the Health Minister said: “I very much wish I could provide some certainty on what the future holds for us all.”
He says the “outbreak has not yet reached the point where restrictions can be relaxed” adding there will be “no major or sudden shifts back to how things used to be”.
He says the “progress achieved through good adherence” to restrictions” would be “lost very quickly if any adverse change in compliance with current social distancing measures or relaxation of measures that help achieve that compliance”.
“We have to face this together,” he says, but acknowledged that “maintaining the lockdown indefinitely” would have “serious repercussions for people’s mental and physical wellbeing”
He says that “this crisis has brought home some really important realities to all of us.
Mr Swann added: “It has underlined more than anything else I can ever remember, just how essential the health service is to society.”
Tomorrow, figures will be released for the total number of deaths from COVID-19 in hospitals, care homes, hospices and in residential addresses up to Friday, April 24.
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