HEALTH minister Robin Swann has defended his handling of the care home crisis during the pandemic and insisted appropriate planning was in place around testing and workforce planning.
In his first interview with The Irish News since taking up post in January, he rejects criticism that his department acted too late by introducing ‘universal’ swabbing for all vulnerable residents and workers nine weeks into lockdown.
He insisted that health chiefs were "working away behind the scenes" in terms of "ramping up" testing regimes as well as redeployment of staff to the care home sector, where 45 per cent of Covid-19 deaths have occurred.
"We’ve been testing care home residents and staff all along," he said.
"As of today, we’ve approximately 5,000 residents out of 13,000 residents who already been tested and around 5,000 staff members as well."
Mr Swann also revealed he believes coronavirus testing at airports and ports should be the same both north and south of the border – with “conversations” currently taking place between the two governments and the Secretary of State on how to resolve the issue.
The minister also said that new targets must be set to address the north’s waiting lists. They were the worst in Europe before the coronavirus outbreak and are set to spiral further as the system emerges from lockdown and suspended surgeries as well as appointments resume.
"We’re now nearly in a situation where we're running two parallel health services - a Covid health service and a normal service. One of the biggest challenges for us is our waiting lists, we were struggling in the past. The ministerial targets we previously set will have to be reviewed while we go between exit phases," he said.
Responding to criticism about a lack of transparency in his department, the former Ulster Unionist leader expressed "frustration" regarding a statistical dashboard being temporarily unavailable - but he said he was confident issues were resolved and that information provided was now ahead of other regions.
In other developments:
- Easing restrictions on 'all-island' sport will require authorities on both sides of the border to move at the same time, a Stormont minister says
- A contact tracing programme to track the spread of coronavirus is set to last for a year
- Teachers unions warn that return to school later this year is unlikely to 'business as usual'
Meanwhile five more deaths were recorded yesterday by Northern Ireland's Department of Health, bringing its toll to 494.
In the Republic there were a further 11 Covid-19 deaths bringing its total to 1,571.
