Hospitals in the Southern Health Trust area are “absolutely on the edge”, according to a senior official.
Ambulances were diverted away from Craigavon Area Hospital on Sunday evening, except in cases of immediate life-threatening situations, due to “extreme pressure” on its wards.
Chief executive Shane Devlin said the trust was “exceptionally close” to declaring a major incident.
He said staff were exhausted due to the huge demand on hospital services.
He said the “extreme measure” of diverting ambulances elsewhere was taken to keep patients safe.
Craigavon Area Hospital started to accept patients arriving by ambulance again at 22:00 GMT on Sunday.
There were 108 people in the emergency department at the peak on Sunday – 32 of those required admission to a ward but just three beds were available, said Mr Devlin.
On Monday morning, he said there were 48 patients who had been waiting for more than 12 hours in the emergency departments at Craigavon Area Hospital and Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry.
The two hospitals also have 141 Covid-19 inpatients, 123 of whom are in Craigavon.
Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Devlin said the decision to divert ambulances away from the Craigavon on Sunday was made to “allow staff and patients some breathing space” to start to manage the patients already at the hospital.
IMAGE SOURCE,STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA WIRE“The system we have, particularly with the level of Covid that we have in our hospital at the moment, is absolutely on the edge in Craigavon and Daisy Hill and other trusts,” he added.
Mr Devlin said the system could not cope with the demands of a major incident, which would have involved calling extra staff in and moving patients to other hospitals.
“We would not have had anywhere to move our patients to and our staff were all in,” he said.
Unvaccinated
He said the trust could not meet the demands it was facing in the winter, which have been exacerbated by the number of coronavirus cases its hospitals are dealing with.
He confirmed that the vast majority of those who had been exceptionally unwell with Covid-19 in the trust’s hospitals had not been vaccinated for the virus.
“Even if you have been vaccinated you can still get Covid and still pass Covid on,” he said.
“Vaccination does not make you impenetrable and it is important that people still adhere to the regulations of face masks and handwashing.”
Mr Devlin urged people to consider alternatives before going to Craigavon Area Hospital on Monday and said it would take time to get the hospital “flowing” again.
Also speaking on Monday, Democratic Unionist party (DUP) minister Edwin Poots, a former health minister, said pressure on hospitals had been aggravated by the lack of domiciliary care packages.
He said home care packages “would release many, many beds in hospital and release pressure on emergency departments and consequently release pressure on the ambulance service”.
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