MEDICAL experts have warned that the North of Ireland could face a second lockdown if the number of positive cases for Coronavirus continues to rise.
The North of Ireland’s rate currently shows 24 cases per 100,000 over the past 14 days and shows no sign of reducing.
And the experts believe the ‘R’ rate here is now higher than in the Republic and mainland UK.
The Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride says if levels of community transmission rise above 80 cases per 100,000 then he would recommend a full lockdown.
This is supported by Health Minister Robin Swann who said restrictions may be needed to be put back in place which could include “possibly reducing the number of people who can meet together in a household”.
Indoor and outdoor gatherings as well as sporting events are all “in the mix”, he added, as “proportionate steps that we can take easily”.
Dr McBride sai: “Obviously if we intervene at an earlier stage then we can prevent the excesses of some of the measures that we had to introduce before,” he said.
“But certainly if we are getting up to that sort of level, and again when we extract particularly the number of new cases over the last week from clusters, then we need to act.”
Dr McBrie says we are set to enter flu season, and the combination of flu and COVID-19 is a problem as it increases the pressure on the health service.
“It makes it very difficult for our contact tracing service – test, trace, protect – to distinguish one from the other,” he said.
North’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride warns of possible second lockdown
“As we move into the winter, we have continued over the last weeks and months to very rapidly scale up our testing capacity.
“We are also very rapidly developing, at a UK-national level, rapid point-of- care tests which will allow us to distinguish – hopefully within a short time frame – between Covid-19 and flu.”
The Chief Scientific Officer Professor Ian Young says the North of Ireland “may already have reached the point” where recommendations need to be made around tightening restrictions to slow the spread of Covid-19.
“At the moment, I think we’re getting very close, if we’re not at the point where we need to do something.
“We cannot continue as we are at present with the increase in cases.”
Prof Young says the current trajectory will result in “increased hospitalisations and deaths if we allow the cases to keep going”.
Prof Ian Young, North’s Chief Scientific Officer
“But those recommendations are ones which need to go to the executive at the appropriate time for them to make a decision.”
He added: “There’s an opportunity for everybody to wise up, as the CMO (chief medical officer Dr Michael McBride) put it, and possibly to turn us back up away from this slippery slope.”
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