He said: “So we’re clearly seeing that there is some compliance.
“We’re seeing that people are responding and that people are staying home compared with what happened earlier in December before the relaxation.
“But we also see that people are not behaving the way they did during the initial lockdown back in March and April and that’s really what we need at this time.
“We need that level of adherence to the stay at home message in order for the cases to drop rapidly and the pressures on hospitals to be reduced.”
Modelling suggests a further increase in hospital admissions on a daily basis, probably for at least the next seven days or so before that levels off.
Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Northern Ireland ‘doubling at a slower rate’
During the previous seven days before the latest, it required only 28 days for the total of infections to double in Northern Ireland.
The number of confirmed cases in Northern Ireland doubled at a slower rate over the last seven days compared with the same period before that, official analysis said. Picture: Liam McBurney/PA
Mon, 11 Jan, 2021 - 17:34
Michael McHugh, PA
The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Northern Ireland doubled at a slower rate over the last seven days, official analysis said.
The 43 days the tally took to multiply is longer than the UK as a whole, at 33, and the Republic of Ireland at 13, Stormont’s Health Department said.
In Northern Ireland, the remnants of a troubled past still linger, with more than 100 peace walls in Belfast separating the Catholic and Protestant areas with corrugated metal sheeting and wire mesh - a constant reminder of the division that existed between the two communities in one of the region s most socio-economically deprived areas.
Now, as the coronavirus takes hold, the links between that deprivation and Covid-19 shows how the burden of illness and death is being shouldered by both sides of this historic divide which have, in fact, much in common in war, in peace and in a pandemic.
In some parts of Northern Ireland where transmission is particularly high, as many as one in 40 people currently has the virus - while elsewhere it is one in 60. Last week, its seven-day rate was higher than in England and over twice that of Scotland, with an 85% increase since St Stephen s Day in the Belfast Health Trust area alone. Some 21 patients are currently in intensive care across the cit
The frightening reality, says Gardiner, is the current trajectory does not bode well. When I have to make a really difficult decision - if we get to the point if resources won t go far enough - I hear no voice that says, we support you in whatever decision you have to make, ethically or socially . How do we decide which people get a longer time in critical care or who gets it in the first place?
He admits that conundrum keeps him up at night and is not a medical decision but a social, political and economic decision .
Inside this hospital, there s the constant ringing of alarms, the noise of the ventilators that are keeping patients alive and the arrival of more very sick people.
Shared Island Initiative, Day 3 - Half of North say ‘not unionist nor nationalist’
Unionist commentator Sarah Creighton: “I’m optimistic about the (Shared Island) unit..it’s about a shared island, not a united Ireland. Photo: Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.
Tue, 29 Dec, 2020 - 17:54
Aoife Moore
On day three of our special report on the Shared Island initiative, Political Correspondent Aoife Moore finds that an increasing number of people in Northern Ireland may carry less emotional baggage when it comes to deciding on the future of the island of Ireland, while unionists reveal their hopes and fears for the North after the formation of the Government s Shared Island Unit.