Northern Ireland is facing “a very difficult winter” due to rising Covid-19 cases and a return of other respiratory viruses, the chief medical officer has warned.
Sir Michael McBride said people had not been exposed to many viruses other than Covid-19, contributing to a “perfect storm” of additional pressures.
He said hospitals were already under pressures normally seen in mid-winter.
Hospital staff were “physically tired and exhausted”, he added.
On Thursday, nine more coronavirus-related deaths were reported in Northern Ireland, and another 1,963 new cases.
Chief scientific adviser Prof Ian Young said the number of people dying with Covid-19 may not hit a peak “for a couple of weeks”.
Sir Michael told Stormont health committee on Thursday that Northern Ireland faced a “challenging flu season”.
“It feels like the middle of the winter at this present moment in time. If you’re in discussion with our frontline staff, you will know that,” he said.
Sir Michael said patients were presenting with complications as a result of being unable to access care when they needed it because of “excessive wait lists”.
“I can only but apologise for the excessive waits. Now people are presenting with complications as a result of the excessive waits that they’ve had to access treatment.
“If you then imagine potentially 400 to 600 Covid admissions on top of that by late summer into September time, then you can imagine the perfect storm of additional pressures.”
Convenience key to youth vaccine
About 180 people had received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at a walk-in clinic at Queen’s University on Wednesday, Health Minister Robin Swann told the committee.
Asked about vaccine hesitancy among young people, Mr Swann said staff on site had engaged with walk-ins to see why they had not previously booked.
“What they were getting is ‘well sure this is handier’,” the minister said.
“So it is about our younger age group, if they have to book maybe not as many are engaged as we’d like to be, but if it’s on their doorstep, if they can walk past and walk in they are doing that.”
His comments come as the first and deputy first ministers urged young people to get vaccinated at the upcoming “big jab weekend“.
Mass vaccination centres will be offering walk-in first jabs for all adult age groups on 21 and 22 August.
‘Take the knees out from under us’
Earlier, Dr David Farren, a microbiologist and infection control doctor with the Northern Health Trust, said hospitals were as busy now as they were in January this year, and the pressure “has not stopped”.
He said the profile of patients had “completely changed” from the elderly and medically vulnerable, to unvaccinated young people.
Speaking to BBC NI’s Good Morning Ulster programme, he said: “It’s no longer the elderly, infirm, clinically extremely vulnerable people that we’re seeing in. We’re seeing unvaccinated young people who don’t have any other illnesses.
“Every single day that we see this we’re wondering how much further can we go, how much more can we give, all the while we know that on the horizon we have the flu season coming up, we have the winter vomiting bug coming up, we have bronchiolitis in kids coming up and if all those hit, it will be a perfect storm that will just take the knees out from under us.”
Currently, about 86.3% of adults in Northern Ireland have had at least one dose of the vaccine.
Just over 77% are fully vaccinated. That compares to about 89.6% in the whole of the UK.
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