Ministers in Northern Ireland have agreed a temporary extension of the current “circuit-breaker” lockdown.
It is understood the current restrictions will remain in place for an extra week, until November 20th, when close contact services and some unlicensed hospitality businesses will be allowed to reopen.
All elements of hospitality, including hotels, will be allowed to open seven days later, from November 27th.
According to Stormont sources, a majority of ministers voted to accept the compromise paper put forward by the Minister for the Economy, the DUP’s Diane Dodds.
The DUP, Alliance and Ulster Unionists voted for the paper, and the SDLP abstained, while Sinn Féin voted against. Sinn Féin had earlier backed a proposal to extend the lockdown by two weeks.
Ministers had been deadlocked over whether to extend the current restrictions, which expire at midnight on Friday.
Earlier, the North’s Department of Health reported 15 further Covid-19 related deaths and 548 cases of the disease.
The department said 11 of the 15 deaths happened in the previous 24 hours, with the total number of fatalities recorded by it now at 825.
The North’s hospital network was operating at 101 per cent capacity on Thursday, with seven out of 12 hospitals operating above capacity. There are 435 inpatients sick with Covid-19, and 46 people are being treated in intensive care.
The average number of positive tests has fallen slightly in the last 24 hours, to 204 per 100,000 people. The infection rate is currently highest in the Causeway Coast and Glens area of east Derry and north Antrim, which stands at 325 per 100,000.
After days of political bickering at Stormont over whether Covid-19 restrictions should be extended or unwound, it was agreed that the measures would be extended for a week.
Four of the five parties in the Executive – Sinn Féin, the SDLP, Alliance and the Ulster Unionist Party – had backed a proposal tabled by the Minister for Health to extend the current curbs for two weeks. This was on the advice of the North’s Chief Medical Officer, who is understood to have advised that any easing of the restrictions would cause “excess deaths”.
However, a contentious Stormont mechanism – a cross-community vote – was used by the DUP to effectively veto the proposal.
Public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally criticised the DUP’s stance on the lifting of restrictions as “just appalling.”
Comments