LOCALISED coronavirus restrictions significantly reduced infection numbers in those parts of Northern Ireland where the rules were first introduced, Stormont's health minister has said.
Robin Swann said that since tighter restrictions were introduced in the Ballymena and BT43 areas, cases have dropped by around 50 per cent, while the Belfast rate has also slowed.
Measures limiting social interactions between households were introduced some weeks ago in Ballymena, Belfast and other areas before being later extended across the north as a whole.
Mr Swann was speaking at Stormont's health committee ahead of the executive yesterday announcing new restrictions for the Derry and Strabane council area.
The minister referred to an "alarming increase" in the number of positive Covid-19 cases across Northern Ireland.
"We are facing a very serious situation," he said, repeating his assessment that Northern Ireland stands at a crossroads.
"If the current trends do not change, if attitudes to this virus do not toughen, in six weeks' time our hospital inpatient numbers will exceed those witnessed during the first wave – and that isn't even the worst-case scenario."
Sinn Féin MLA Pat Sheehan suggested to the health minister that there is a Covid service, but not a health service unless you have an immediate life-threatening condition.
"When can we expect normal service to be resumed?" he asked.
Mr Swann responded, saying it is not possible to give a date until Covid-19 has gone away.
But he said they are trying to open up as many services as possible.
Chief medical officer Dr Michael McBride warned that the health service is not likely to be "business as usual for many, many months... until such times as we have better control on the virus".
He also gave a stark description of the experience of a seriously ill Covid-19 patient, saying it is "difficult for people to imagine what it's like to be fighting for your breath".
"You've got a mask tightly fitted over your face which many people find quite claustrophobic," he said.
"It's a bit like facing into a wind tunnel, you've got this air coming at high pressure forcing air into your airways, it's a very unpleasant experience.
"What you know as a patient sitting there is it's the difference between you keeping well and staying well, and perhaps ending up needing to be transferred into intensive care.
"Then comes the conversation that has to be had with those individuals, that once they are ventilated they might never wake up again, it may not ever be possible to take them off the ventilator.
"It's a very, very scary experience, and when individuals are paralysed and ventilated, they don't know whether they are going to wake up again, and their relatives don't know if they are going to wake up again, and sadly for too many, they don't."
SDLP MLA Colin McGrath joined the meeting by video call after going into self-isolation following a notification via the StopCOVID NI app that he had been in contact with a positive case of Covid-19.
