The number of people admitted to hospital with flu in Northern Ireland this winter is 3.6 times higher than the previous year, Stormont’s Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has said.
Mr Nesbitt told the Health Committee that patients facing long waits in hospital emergency departments were often having to “surrender their dignity and privacy” and said staff were facing “moral injury”.
The minister announced that the flu vaccination programme would be extended to all those over the age of 50.
Officials from the Department of Health said it has been the worst year for flu cases since before the pandemic, but added they believed the number of hospital admissions had peaked.
Mr Nesbitt attended the emergency meeting of his oversight committee amid ongoing concerns about winter pressures on health services in Northern Ireland, particularly the amount of time people are having to wait at emergency departments in hospitals.
Mr Nesbitt began his evidence by paying tribute to health and social care staff who had worked over Christmas.
The minister said he was “looking for levers short term” to deal with hospital pressures, as well as offering a “blank page” for next winter.
He said: “I want to emphasise this is not just a Northern Ireland-specific problem.
“Over the weekend past Liverpool health trust has declared a critical incident. Two others have similarly declared critical incidents, Plymouth and Hampshire.
“I am not saying that to minimise the importance of what is happening here, but it is an illustration that the pressures are both serious and nationwide.
“Across Northern Ireland we have seen 3.6 times as many patients hospitalised with flu this winter compared to last year.”
The minister said he had made several visits to emergency departments, including Altnagelvin and the Ulster hospitals.
He said: “There are common themes. Patients arrive with a reasonable expectation that they won’t have to surrender their dignity and their privacy, but that is often the case in these crisis times.
“The staff are suffering moral injury. They did not sign up to deliver a service in this way.”
He invited the committee to be constructive in helping to support him to deal with challenges.
The minister said: “It appears to me certain MLAs engage only after the fact when the opportunity arises to criticise without alternatives.”
Mr Nesbitt said demands for easy answers to winter hospital pressures are “understandable but misguided”.
He added: “I am planning to ensure all social care workers receive the real living wage at an estimated additional cost of some £50 million.
“That will help stabilise the system and hopefully attract new people to work in it.
“I intend to be the health minister that brings to an end minimum age employment for social care workers.”
He added: “Flu vaccines will now be available to the over 50s, ie, the age group 50 to 64.
“That is a new development.
“Having prioritised those most at risk and healthcare workers, I am now in a position to widen the reach of the flu vaccination programme.”
Tracey McCaig, chief operating officer at the Department of Health, said that until Christmas Eve, winter plans were holding up “reasonably well” in most locations.
“From 25 December, for that next week, we had 773 more attendances than we would have expected to have received.
“And clearly, over Christmas week we wouldn’t discharge as many – that’s just the pattern – so that week really impacted what we had.
“So while we had planned and why everyone has worked really hard within all of the sources we have, that one week has been exceptionally difficult, and that’s what you’re seeing playing out, unfortunately.
“From a resilience perspective and a capacity perspective, those two things, we would never have had the space or the resources to be able to manage that effectively, we would have seen some level of difficulty.”
Dr Joanne McClean, director of public health at the Public Health Agency, said it had been the worst year for flu since the Covid-19 pandemic and “significantly” worse than last year.
“(The) flu kind of went away during Covid because we were all doing social distancing and all those things. So flu didn’t really spread.
“It came back with a bit of a vengeance in 22/23 and we saw quite high numbers of admissions. Last year we had flu, but not to the same levels.
“This year, we’ve had much more flu, and flu has reached a higher peak than it did in 22/23.
“As Tracey has said, the other thing was the peak of the flu just hit before Christmas. So the absolute biggest number of flu admissions was week commencing the 16th, and then some trusts had their peak at Christmas week, and that coincides with a time where, inevitably, you get a change in how people use health services and it’s more difficult to discharge people from hospital.”
She said that based on the latest figures, the Department believes they had reached the peak number of admissions.
The Royal College of General Practitioners Northern Ireland (RCGPNI) said GPs across the region are “working beyond capacity”.
RCGPNI chair Dr Ursula Mason said: “The testimonies of patients attending emergency departments this winter are harrowing and are unfortunately mirrored by those of our colleagues working in such difficult conditions.
“It is imperative that a long-term solution to capacity is found, but efforts must continue for short term and in-year mitigations.
“While colleagues in EDs are under immense pressure to meet demand, GPs too are seeing a similar surge.
“Already facing into winter with year-long capacity concerns, we are now under additional pressure to see and deal with more and more this winter.”
