Covid: Patients treated in car parks in Northern Ireland as hospitals fill up

‘We’re not seeing second surge abate’ says hospital chief, as ambulances forced to wait hours in queues

Medical staff attending patients in an ambulance at Antrim Area Hospital (PA)

Queues of ambulances have formed outside several hospitals in Northern Ireland, as concerns rise about the NHS coming under serious pressure during an enduring second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

At one point outside Antrim Area Hospital, 17 ambulances containing patients were lined up outside the emergency department – with doctors forced to treat patients in the car park.

Director of operations at the Northern Trust Wendy Magowan said one patient has waited 10 hours in an ambulance overnight. “We have never known that in Antrim hospital, that simply does not happen, but there wasn’t a safe area to bring that patient in,” she said.

Ms Magowan said that 100 of the Antrim hospital’s 400 beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients. “The pressure has been building, we are seeing our Covid figures here in Antrim hospital increasing,” she said. “Day in day we’re not seeing this second surge starting to abate at all.”

The worrying scenes unfolded as first minister Arlene Foster participated in a call with other UK political leaders to review the planned relaxation of restrictions between 23 and 27 December.

Stormont ministers are set to discuss the situation on Thursday amid intensifying calls from medics to rethink the plan to allow three households to form a bubble over the five-day period.

Northern Ireland’s chief medical officer Dr Michael McBride has warned that the region now faces one of the most challenging periods of the pandemic after the most recent circuit break lockdown failed to drive down infections. He said the region is not where it needed to be in terms of case numbers at the start of a fortnight of festive relaxations.

“The circumstances we are currently facing are extremely troubling,” said Dr McBride. “We are not where we need to be or should be in terms of the transmission of the virus.”

The region’s chief medical officer stopped short of calling for the holiday plan to be scrapped, but said it was important that arrangements for the festive season were “kept under review”.

Northern Ireland’s health minister Robin Swann will propose a series of new Covid restrictions to colleagues at Stormont on Thursday. “I will be bringing a paper to the executive on Thursday with a number of recommendations,” he said.

The deaths of a further six people with Covid-19 in Northern Ireland were announced on Tuesday, bringing the region’s toll to 1,135. Another 486 new cases of the virus were recorded in 24 hours. Hospital capacity across the region stood at 104 per cent on Tuesday.

Chief scientific adviser Professor Ian Young said there was no evidence to date to show that the recent circuit-break lockdown had brought down case numbers. He said the R number was “at or a little bit above 1 … That’s certainly not where we hoped it would be”.

He said the reproduction number was expected to rise “significantly above” 1 during the current period of relaxations.

He urged anyone who was planning to take advantage of the relaxations on household gatherings over Christmas to stop socialising now. “What I’d be saying to anybody who is planning to bubble … for the next 10 days you should be seeing nobody else,” he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the UK’s communities secretary Robert Jenrick admitted the easing in restrictions will lead to an increase in infections.